Donnie Yen And Peter Chen On 'Wu Xia,' Martial Arts Movies

He's China's hottest action star who's joining forces with renowned Chinese director Peter Chen on the martial arts adventure film, Wu Xia, which was the talk of Cannes. Donnie Yen and director Chen spoke exclusively with Uinterview at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Yen, an actor, martial artist, film director and producer, was born in China, and raised in Hong Kong and Boston. Influenced by his mother, a martial arts grandmaster, Yen spent much of his time in Boston dabbling in different styles of martial arts until his parents finally sent him back to China where he did a two-year martial arts training program in Beijing. As he was about to return to the United States, Yen met up with action choreographer, Yuen Woo-ping who has also worked with actors Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh.

Yen has appeared in films opposite Jackie Chan (Shanghai Knights), Jet Li (Once Upon A Time In China II) and Yeoh (Wing Chun). Yen is foremost a martial artist and secondarily an actor, which has allowed him to bring MMA and other types of Martial Arts into the mainstream culture of China. He is most widely credit for popularizing the style of martial arts called Wing Chun, which came from his film Ip Man, in which he plays the original Wing Chun master.

Chan named Yen the top action actor in Hong Kong, which is no wonder why Chan casted him in his latest film, Wu Xia. Chan was born in Hong Kong and raised in Thailand. He attended UCLA where he studied filmmaking, but did not complete his degree. Instead of finishing his studies, Chan returned to Hong Kong where he held an internship as a second assistant director and producer. Chan is a widely accomplished director of 14 films and producer of over 30. He has won various Hong Kong and other Asian Film Festival Awards for his films, The Warlords, Comrades: Almost A Love Story and Perhaps Love. The later was one of the top grossing films of 2005 in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Chan’s Hollywood directorial debut was in 1998 with The Love Letter, starring Ellen DeGeneres, Blythe Danner, Kate Capshaw and Tom Selleck.

Now, Peter Chan and Donnie Yen are taking Cannes together for their very first time in lieu of their new action film, Wu Xia, their latest action thriller. When we caught up with them, Yen and Chan gave us some insight into their collaboration. “Before we had a script or a story or even an idea, our only common thread for the both of us was our love for that genre and movies form the 60s and 70s of Shaw Brothers,” Chen told Uinterview exclusively. “So we wanted to pay homage to that era. We wanted to go back to the origin of martial arts films.”