I have my own fighting style and the way I do my actions makes it hard for people to double me. No matter how good you are, everyone in Hollywood has a stunt double for insurance. I look up to her and, yeah, I hope I can work with her again. She was so graceful, really loving and caring and generous. I’d say until this day that she’s the biggest female action actress in Hollywood and it was amazing to have worked with her on Sword of Destiny. She didn’t start in martial arts, she was a dancer who actually got trained by the Jackie Chan team and became a female action figure. There’s Michelle Yeoh, whom I really like, especially after working with her. There really weren’t that many of us at that time. Netflix was doing this worldwide search for Asian actors and actresses who knew martial arts for the movie, and they’d heard about me as one of the action actresses based in Hong Kong who also spoke English. A scene from The Invincible Dragon (2019) Was that how you got your Hollywood start and joined the cast of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016)? After that, I brought my nunchucks out and showed people what I was capable of. He could tell I could fight, and he said maybe I should focus on letting people know that and not be afraid of being different. There are a lot more action stars in the older generation, but not in our current generation. But Antony told me he was having a hard time finding female actors who could act and do their own actions. I wanted to make hip-hop and rap music, but my management told me to stick with mellow love songs. My image was very different then – I had long hair and looked very girly, which was the typical look in Hong Kong at that time. But at that time also, I didn’t tell people that I could do martial arts. At that time, I was doing so much and Antony knew I wanted to become an actress. My husband, Antony Szeto, directed one of my first music videos. I got signed to a music label and I released an album in Hong Kong where I wrote my own songs.
When I came back I took any opportunity that came to me, because I just wanted to perform.
In Hong Kong especially, actors are expected to act, sing, and appear in campaigns. You’ve credited your husband for pushing you to embrace your martial-arts background as an actress. I talked to Chan Szeto about her love for martial arts, her favourite action scenes and her upcoming feature film on Netflix, Wu Assassins: Fistful of Vengeance. That director, with the gems of wisdom that put Chan Szeto on the map and Hollywood on her radar, is Antony Szeto, who’s now her husband. From beauty pageants to reality shows, and even a brief music career, Chan Szeto tried everything to make her mark, but it wasn’t until a director told her to embrace her roots as a martial artist that she found her way. JuJu Chan Szeto (Image: Lewis Tan / Hair: BRUNEBLONDE) Afterwards, she came back to Hong Kong to begin her career here and she’s never looked back since. She studied computer science – “something practical befitting a traditional Chinese family” – but ultimately found herself enrolling into New York’s Tisch School of the Arts and learning the ropes of the film industry. From judo, to karate, Chinese kung fu, taekwondo and Thai boxing, Chan Szeto has honed her martial-arts skills since she was 10, entering national competitions and representing Hong Kong in taekwondo.Ī born performer, Chan Szeto says she’s never turned down a chance to sing, dance, or act since she was a child. “I broke a lot of things at home.” Exasperated with their daughter’s boundless energy, her parents sent her off to judo school where she fell in love with martial arts.
“I’d jump from table to table,” she says.
Her father was an action-movie fanatic, and every time they watched something together, Chan Szeto remembers copying every move by Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Donnie Yen. We sit down with the action star to talk about how embracing her martial-arts background led to her big break in Hollywood.Īs a child, JuJu Chan Szeto wouldn’t sit still. No one said showbiz was easy, and if you’ve met JuJu Chan Szeto, you’ll know she’s not one to give up.