Daniel Wu

[AlbertV]

 

California-born Daniel Wu has made his name known in Hong Kong and now with the show Into the Badlands, he has made his way home. 

 

Born in Berkeley, California on September 30, 1974 to immigrant Shanghainese parents, Wu became immersed in martial arts since seeing Jet Li's The Shaolin Temple. At the age of 11, he began to study wushu. When he went to the University of Oregon to study architecture, he founded the Oregon Wushu Club and became the program's first coach. The program is still running today. 

 

When Wu went to Hong Kong to see the handover of Hong Kong to China, he didn't know his life will change. One of his elder sisters suggested he try out modeling. Seeing his ad, director Yonfan met with Wu and thus, began his film career. Wu learned Cantonese phonetically when he made his first film, Bishonen, in which he played a closeted police officer. When Wu met Jackie Chan at a restaurant opening, he would sign with the JC Group and earned his breakout role as gangster Daniel Ma in Gen-X Cops in 1999. Since then, Daniel appeared in many action films but had done comedies and dramas as well.

 

His first film as a producer was in 2003 with the horror film Night Corridor. His first taste of Hollywood was a cameo role as a Black Scorpion warrior in Jackie Chan's take on Around the World in 80 Days. He made his directorial debut with a mockumentary film about the Hong Kong music industry, The Heavenly Kings, in which he, Terence Yin, Conroy Chan, and Andrew Lin created the fictional boyband Alive. After the film's release, the "band" website, AliveNotDead.com, was reinvented as a social network for entertainers to interact with their fans. HK celebrities such as Wu, Yin, Chan, Lin, Sam Lee, Andy On, and Philip Ng are a few entertainers on the site. 

 

In 2012, Daniel appeared as villain Poison Dagger in The RZA's The Man with the Iron Fists. In 2013, he appeared in Europa Report as an astronaut. This year, Wu made his Hollywood series debut as the conflicted Sunny on AMC's Into the Badlands, which earned the highest rated series debut of the season. Wu will next be seen in Warcraft as Gul'Dan, an Orc leader and is filming Battle of Life.

 

In 2012, Daniel and longtime friend Stephen Fung (the duo appeared together in Fung's two first films as director, Enter the Phoenix and House of Fury) formed Diversion Pictures, which made the Tai Chi films, a kung fu-steampunk hybrid starring wushu champion Jayden Yuan. Fung and Wu are also executive producers on Into the Badlands.

 

Daniel is married to model/actress Lisa Selesner and the couple have a two-year old daughter, Raven.

 

Daniel's official blog is at AliveNotDead.com

[AlbertV]

At the Hong Kong Film Awards, Gen-X Cops (Stephen Fung, Nicholas Tse, and Sam Lee) reunited with Daniel Wu on stage. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the film's release.