White actors in Hong Kong/Taiwanese movies

[ShawAngela]

Except George Lazenby, Chris MItchum, Birte Tove and John Saxon, are there any other white actors who played in Golden Harvest, Shaws or any other Chinese company and did they have success ?

John Saxon seems to have played in only Enter the dragon, but he was already a star in his country.

Was it the same for Chris Mitchum for instance ?

[Yihetuan]

sorry, I deleted my previous post because I thought you were asking about "gweilo" actors/actresses in general. It seems you want to know about established actors/actresses that went on to collaborate with HK studios.

One that comes to mind is Stuart Whitman who starred with Ti Lung in the Shaw/Hammer collaboration film, Shatter.  Peter Cushing was also in Shatter as well as The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires.

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by Yihetuan
misunderstood question

[TheKungFuRobber]

Not usually huge names often, although like the Italians and the Japanese did there were a few token white actors used as cash ins in some Hong Kong movies (especially IFD), but the biggest stars I can name are the ones you already listed. I did want to mention Double Target for having Donald Pleasance in it but it's mainly an Italian-Hong Kong co production filmed in the Phillippines, directed by our old pal Bruno Mattei (watch it it's good fun with people getting blown up and stuff). Also not sure if false memory, but didn't Ben Stiller have a cameo in Rumble in the Bronx as one of the punks?

EDIT: CYNTHIA FUCKING ROTHROCK, Joyce Godenzi, Benny The Jet and Richard Norton !!!!!!

Edited May 1, 2020 by TheKungFuRobber

[Chu Liu Hsiang]

Does Richard Harrison qualify? imdb lists lots of entries prior to his Shaw venture but I don't know if they were bit roles or can be considered an established career. 

[ShawAngela]

4 minutes ago, Chu Liu Hsiang said:

Does Richard Harrison qualify?

Ah, yes, I had forgotten him too !!

And we all forgot Chuck Norris !!!!!!

[ShawAngela]

11 hours ago, Yihetuan said:

sorry, I deleted my previous post because I thought you were asking about "gweilo" actors/actresses in general. It seems you want to know about established actors/actresses that went on to collaborate with HK studios.

One that comes to mind is Stuart Whitman who starred with Ti Lung in the Shaw/Hammer collaboration film, Shatter.  Peter Cushing was also in Shatter as well as The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires.

I didn't see your previous post, and yes, i was talking about actors/actresses in general.

Of course, how could I forget Stuart Whitman and Peter Cushing !

But it seems that they only played in one HK movie, right ?

[ShawAngela]

9 hours ago, TheKungFuRobber said:

EDIT: CYNTHIA FUCKING ROTHROCK, Joyce Godenzi, Benny The Jet and Richard Norton !!!!!!

How could I forget Cynthia Rothrock ! Thanks !

There is also this white actor who played Shih Szu's lover in 7 Golden vampires. It seems to me that I also saw him in some TVB/ATV series, but I'm not sure.

And yes, there were also Bruce Lee's/Bruce Li's white opponents in their movies...

 

[Graeme Of Death]

Don't think Ben Stiller was ever in Rumble in the Bronx.

Never really been many established western actors done much in HK. John Saxon, Peter Cushing etc did just the one film I think?

[TheKungFuRobber]

5 hours ago, ShawAngela said:

How could I forget Cynthia Rothrock ! Thanks !

There is also this white actor who played Shih Szu's lover in 7 Golden vampires. It seems to me that I also saw him in some TVB/ATV series, but I'm not sure.

And yes, there were also Bruce Lee's/Bruce Li's white opponents in their movies...

 

You mean like John Ladalski, Pierre Kirby and Stuart Smith? I didn't mention them because they weren't really big names. What about Roy Horan from Tower of Death, Snake in Eagle's Shadow, Ring of Death, Raging Thunder, Snuff Bottle Connection and Bruce Lee's Secret. He was a great martial artist on screen, I always love his role in Tower of Death "Take them to the graveyard and show them around maybe that will change their minds!". Absolutely awesome, and he seems like a great guy as well in person his interviews and Ted Talks are really interesting to watch.

 

Not to mention him having arguably the best death scenes ever

Also could mention Brandon Lee, he's Eurasian so I'm not really sure if he would count as such for all intents (the problem mixed race people face is that they face racism from both sides, but no exception in Hong Kong filmmaking). Not exactly a Hong Kong actor of sorts having only been in one unsuccessful Hong Kong film Legacy of Rage, but cast to cash in on the merit that he was Bruce Lee's son, a typecasting he had from growing up in his fathers shadow being painfully cast in martial arts films such as Rapid Fire and Showdown in Little Tokyo and of course then sadly dying too early in the making of The Crow which was one of the greatest tragedies. I liked Legacy of Rage as a film a lot, especially the last 20 minutes which has some great action but I could see why it didn't work, it's a rather undignified work more so than is normal in film.

Also forgot to mention Mike Leeder, who was in Fist of Legend. Also the wrestler Nathan Jones played the American wrestler in that film, not doing any other films in Hong Kong but he did play an extra in Jackie Chans First Strike and also played a gigantic wrestler in the brilliant Thai martial arts film Tom-Yum-Goong which should be renamed to Don't Fuck with Tony Jaa's Elephants. I liked Fearless, it was a good tale rife with anti-imperialist themes which can be related to Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury. One of my favorite modern HK movies even if I'm not a huge fan of Jet Li.

More recently, Mike Leeder also played a part in the Hong Kong crime drama Chasing the Dragon with leading actor Donnie Yen, which is a good film and worth a watch.

[HyperDrive]

5 hours ago, Chu Liu Hsiang said:

Does Richard Harrison qualify? imdb lists lots of entries prior to his Shaw venture but I don't know if they were bit roles or can be considered an established career. 

I would think so since he was a leading actor in Italy, starting with The Invincible Gladiator and later on in stuff like Gunfight at Red Sands, and Secret Agent Fireball.

Lets not forget Richard Kiel, the man who played Jaws in Moonraker. He appeared in several movies like Aces Go Places III and Cannonball Run II.

Paul Smith, whose biggest role in the west was playing Bluto in Popeye, was the lead villain in the Angela Mao/Bruce Li film Return of the Tiger.

[Yihetuan]

@TheKungFuRobber, a big fan of Fearless as well. I remember Nathan Jones from WWE too. I also enjoyed Danny the Dog aka Unleashed but I may in the extreme minority on that one!

[TheKungFuRobber]

11 hours ago, HyperDrive said:

I would think so since he was a leading actor in Italy, starting with The Invincible Gladiator and later on in stuff like Gunfight at Red Sands, and Secret Agent Fireball.

Lets not forget Richard Kiel, the man who played Jaws in Moonraker. He appeared in several movies like Aces Go Places III and Cannonball Run II.

Paul Smith, whose biggest role in the west was playing Bluto in Popeye, was the lead villain in the Angela Mao/Bruce Li film Return of the Tiger.

I forgot to mention that The Cannonball Run was indeed a Hong Kong movie, so you can also count Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, Dean Martin, Farrah Fawcett, Roger Moore, the director Hal Needham, Jack Elam and Peter Fonda as established white actors in a Hong Kong movie. You would mistake it for an American film. It is memorable for me for one scene in which Jackie Chan and Korean-American comedian Jimmy Yune appear and Jimmy speaks in deliberate gobldegook and Jackie in broken Cantonese for comedic value, it's meant to be Japanese because Jackie Chan and Michael Hui play Japanese subaru drivers in the film (funnilly enough both him and Michael Hui are miscredited as Mistubishi drivers in the end credits). I saw the casting of Korean Johnny Yune as the host and Jackie and Michael Hui speaking Cantonese as a light hearted ethnic jibe at the silly Americans who can't tell the difference I'd imagine, much like the silly white people who complain about Hong Kong movies being dubbed in English and yearn to watch them "undubbed" not knowing that they are almost always dubbed in three main languages.

You can also count the No Retreat No Surrender series as English language Hong Kong films, which of course starred actors such as Kurt McKinney, JCVD, Max Thayer, Keith Vitali, Mattias Hues and Cynthia Rothrock.

Not to mention Bruce Lee's Game of Death, which had a large predominintly white American cast with Gig Young, Dean Jagger, Colleen Camp, Hugh o Brien, Bob Wall, Mel Novak and African American 7ft 2 inch giant Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

I also forgot that Richard Kiel was in Mad Mission 3, but thanks for pointing that out.

[Drunken Monk]

Paul Rudd was in Gen X Cops. Granted, he had already been in Clueless but his career didn’t seem to blow up until 2004’s Anchorman.

Scott Adkins was in The Accidental Spy and Black Mask 2: City of Masks before becoming the household name he is today.

[sifu iron perm]

cynthia rothrock and sophia crawford were my favourites!!

 

[AlbertV]

Kim-Maree Penn was the double for Zoshka Mizak in Dolph Lundgren's The Punisher before she made a name for herself in Hong Kong appearing in In the Line of Duty V: Middle Man, Police Story III: Super Cop, Fun & Fury, How to Meet the Lucky Stars, and Death Games. Of course, she is still living there as the head of her own private security company. 

Lau Kar-Leung's protege Mark Houghton was also a well-known mainly villain actor in Aces Go Places V, Outlaw Brothers, Skinny Tiger and Fatty Dragon. He also appeared in Drunken Master II and played a good guy in Fury in Red. He now has been working as an action director as a promise to the late Sifu Lau as well as running his master's martial arts school. I had the pleasure to interview him last year for his documentary I Am the White Tiger (Which BTW if you all want to see it and have Amazon Prime, you can see it there for free)
Interview on WorldFilmGeek

What about Dutch-born Thai boxer Saskia Van Rijswijk? She played a villain in a few D&B action flicks, I think they were Final Run and China White. 

 

[CT KID]

Dan Ivan was a well known Karate stylist/instructor from the 70's and 80's that played the crooked police chief in Slaughter in San Francisco with Wong Tao and Chuck Norris.

[Koravec]

I mean, cant forget Chuck Norris right? Believe he would qualify lol.

Edited May 14, 2020 by Koravec

[AlbertV]

I thought of another one. Current MMA promoter Scott Coker appeared as a henchman in Dragon Fight and threw down a bit against Dick Wei (Coker was a member of Ernie Reyes' team at the time of shooting) and wushu exponent Kenny Perez was in both Dragon Fight and Mismatched Couples (as Donnie Yen's dance rival)

[Drunken Monk]

If he’s been mentioned, I’m sorry, but Jeff Falcon definitely had a presence back in the 80’s and 90’s. He hasn’t been in loads of films but his roles are pretty memorable.

[J.J. Hayden]

Don't know if these guys count as being established, but how about Jerry "Golden Boy" Trimble he was a kickboxing champ before working in films or Jeff Wolfe who did a few USA movies before trying Hong Kong?

[Yihetuan]

There was Paul Smith, the actor who played Bluto in the 1980 Robert Altman film version of Popeye. He was in the Bruceploitation film, Return of the Tiger with Bruce Li & Angelo Mao. He was prominently displayed in the Italian poster for the movie. You can watch the final fight scene with Ho Chung-tao in this time stamped clip:

 

[J.J. Hayden]

Michael Biehn was in a HK movie called Dragon Heat.

Gary Daniels was a kickboxing champ and had done a few acting roles before doing HK stuff like City Hunter and Bloodmoon.

[Omni Dragon]

@ShawAngela

What level of establishment as an actor should we consider?

Well known actors? Acting credits outside of Chinese movies? A role with a significant amount of screen time? Or just any white person seen in a Hong Kong/Taiwanese movie?

I would not say the following are big actors and I almost overstate their notoriety but I'll mention them here anyway:

Lola Forner (according to IMDB Actress (28 credits) seems to have had some acting credits in Spanish film and TV before and after appearing in Project A (briefly), Wheels on Meals and Armour of God.

Evelyne Kraft (according to IMDB Actress (14 credits) has some acting credits in European film and TV before and after The Mighty Peking Man.

There was a few other white actors in The Mighty Peking Man, Jim James (according to IMDB Actor (38 credits), according to HKMDB Actor (65 films) Alexander Grand Actor (according to IMDB Actor (21 credits). Those numbers are impressive even if they were small roles in Chinese movies.

Another white actor in The Mighty Peking Man is Ted Thomas. I only really bring him up because he's notable for English dubs of Chinese movies, and it might be the law nowadays that I have to mention English dubs in every other post or something.  In all seriousness in an interview he claims to be in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing and The World of Suzie Wong, though I get the impression Thomas has a hard time spotting himself.

Another dubber who had some screen roles is Warwick Evans most of them were in Chinese movies (he played Dracula in a movie called The Gate of Hell and was very briefly seen in the 1978 version of Game of Death) though he did actually appear in the background of a TV movie called Caesar and Cleopatra and was even in a scene where Alec Guinness was in the foreground.

Edited November 28, 2020 by Omni Dragon

[ShawAngela]

16 hours ago, Omni Dragon said:

@ShawAngela

What level of establishment as an actor should we consider?

Well known actors? Acting credits outside of Chinese movies? A role with a significant amount of screen time? Or just any white person seen in a Hong Kong/Taiwanese movie?

I would say all of these possibilities, I guess...

[Cognoscente]

Peter Graves from Mission: Impossible was in Aces Go Places III.

Charles Heung as a producer had enough clout to cast two American TV stars in May Jane (1987). This was a Taiwanese war drama. The stars were James Callahan from Charles in Charge, and Priscilla Barnes from Three's a Company.

[monk]

jeff falcon and dan mintz