Donnie Yen didn’t become the most bankable leading man in Hong Kong overnight. The martial arts superstar opens up about struggles, strife, and ultimate success. Interview by Edmund Lee. Photography by Calvin Sit

Things have not been looking bright in the world of Chinese martial arts movies. Sammo Hung is getting fatter; Jet Li keeps on confusing the world with his wushu movie retirement; Jackie Chan is selling shampoo; and Bruce Lee is still dead. All these, to the relief of many, have been rendered academic since a certain bloke called Donnie Yen became widely mistaken in our public consciousness for an altogether different man – called Ip Man (no relation to Iron Man), who’s perhaps better known as Bruce Lee’s Wing Chun mentor. “Ip Man changed everything,” Yen says of his starring role in the acclaimed 2008 period biopic when we meet at the weekend.

We’re here supposedly to chat about his latest effort The Lost Bladesman, directors Alan Mak and Felix Chong’s dramatic retelling of the fabled tale of Guan Yu of the Three Kingdoms period. But our conversation inevitably drifts back, time and again, to Ip Man. Then again, as Yen is all too ready to concede, everything happened because of that movie. Soon afterwards, an inevitable follow-up, Ip Man 2, claimed an emphatic box office victory over – of all movies – Iron Man 2, which opened here in the same week last April. The popular sequel ended up taking in more than HK$43million locally, and became 2010’s highest grossing Chinese-language film in Hong Kong.

“It’s the most influential movie that I’ve ever done. Not only was the box office great, but it also created a social phenomenon. [The character] became a household name,” says the 47-year old actor. “I think it’s a blessing. It’s the most rewarding thing that any actor can ask for, because not everyone [of them], in their entire career, can meet such a role and play it successfully. It’s like Sylvester Stallone: everybody refers to him as Rocky or Rambo. And Jet Li is Wong Fei-hung – people remember that. You know, I have Ip man, and it took me many, many years to [get to this role].” As if trying to sound mildly baffled by his dramatic change of fortune after more than 20 years in the business, he adds wistfully, “And somehow it happened.”

Yen may not be the only person in the world who believed the martial artist-turned action star would one day become the most bankable leading man in the Hong Kong film industry. Indeed, we would venture to presume that about all five of those believers had been anticipating his superstardom ever since his childhood days. Born in 1963, the Guangdong-born actor grew up in Hong Kong between the ages of two and 11, when his family moved to Boston, Massachusetts. His earliest memory related to martial arts reaches all the way back to the time when his mother – renowned wushu master Bow-sim Mark, who founded the first Chinese Wushu Research Institute in Boston in 1975 – would drag him out of bed at 5.30 every morning, forcing the young boy to train for an hour or more before going to school.

“You know, when you grow up, when you’re a child, there’s a lot of rebellion against what your parents teach you,” he says, recalling the foundation of his multi-faceted martial arts expertise. “So I’d run away from my mother’s school to other schools to learn martial arts. That has kind of, in a way, made me who I am today, because I’ve learned so many different martial arts styles. Besides learning from my mother and the teachers in her school, I’ve learned karate, taekwondo, boxing and other kung fu styles. I think it has [to do with] my personality – I was curious as a child.”

Being a good fighter is one thing; being a composing figure on the big screen is quite another. So even after Yen was sent, as a teenager, to China to train with the prestigious Beijing Wushu Team for two years, his first crack at martial arts celebrity only truly arrived when he was introduced, midway during his trip back to the U.S., to the celebrated director/action choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, who was then looking for a new actor for his kung fu vehicles. Yen is unreserved in his compliments for the man who brought him into the industry. “Yuen Woo-ping will always be my sifu,” he enthuses. “He’s one of the greatest action directors in the last 40 years.”

After making his acting debut as the star of Yuen’s 1984 movie, Drunken Tai Chi, Yen’s career would take him from Hong Kong to Hollywood and back again for the next two decades. Unbeknown to most people, the intertwining destinies between the actor and his eventual star turn as Ip Man had already begun as early as 1996. “When [director] Jeff Lau – who’s a close working partner of Wong Kar-wai – and another couple of directors formed a company at that time, I was asked by Lau to play Ip Man,” he remembers. “Actually, I was signed to play Ip Man; I took the deposit too. And Stephen Chow [was to] play Bruce Lee. But then the company fell apart and the movie never went [into production].”

The public spat surrounding the concurrent development of Yen’s Ip Man movies and Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmasters – a long-anticipated take on the same Wing Chun icon that, as per the arthouse auteur’s usual custom, has been lingering in development and production limbo for years – has been well-documented; yet it’s still quite exciting to hear it from the actor himself. “A few years after [Jeff Lau’s project fell through], Wong Kar-wai announced that he wanted to [film] Ip Man,” he says. “But of course, for many, many years, he never got to [make the movie]. Then I got a call from [veteran producer] Raymond Wong, who asked me to play Ip Man. [They] had [obtained] the proper rights from the [Ip] family.

He continues: “When I announced that I wanted to play Ip Man, there were so many controversies. There were a lot of doubts, a lot of badmouthing, even from Wong Kar-wai’s people. They said, [in a sarcastic tone], ‘Ah, how can you compare [with us]? We’re not on the same level, you know? You can never be successful. You may be good at fighting, but it would never be a successful movie. And you can never compare to Tony Leung [Chiu-wai, star of The Grandmasters,] to play Ip Man.’ You know, there’s a lot of this kind of pressure.

“But of course, me and Wilson Yip, the director, we continued to believe in our mission. We made Ip Man, and it came out and was very, very successful. Then Ip Man 2 really just confirmed [that success].” At this point, Yen is barely able to hide his satisfied smirk. “Of course, after that, they didn’t say anything else.” He momentarily breaks his image of consummate cool, bursting into hearty laughter for the first time during our interview. “So sometimes, it’s just never say never, you know? Maybe I [was] just meant to play this role in the first place. [From] back in 1996 till now, [I’ve taken] a big circle. At the end, I played Ip Man, and Ip Man became so successful.”

You can tell how important a constant urge to improve is to Yen just by listening to him closely: he will use the word “successful” 19 times in our 45-minute chat, having also reiterated four times his desire to “break grounds” in the realm of martial arts cinema. Speaking with obvious excitement whenever he talks about his dual ambitions – to “be a better actor in every movie”, and to “elevate the standard of kung fu movies” – Yen may sound like an overzealous newcomer looking to calve out a career path if you happened across our chat without knowing who was speaking. In the end, however, it was hardly any surprise when the Hong Kong media crowned him with the nickname of, um, “Universe’s Strongest”.

Yen offers me a very dry “ha ha” as I mention his winning moniker, before adding, “I don’t really…” He takes a brief pause. “You know, it’s just a gimmick. I try my best in every one of my departments: acting, directing. And I always try to break grounds, try to improve. Every day I get up and say to myself, ‘Oh, as a creator, as an artist, am I repeating what I’ve done before?’ If I am, then I have a problem. All these years, I’ve never really stopped trying to be better. Everybody loved Ip Man – if you look at it I could’ve done 10 or 20 Ip Man’s, but I didn’t. Because I feel as an actor, that’s my responsibility to give back to the audience; after Ip Man, I took on different roles.”

As our cinema’s current go-to action star, Yen has been participating in a range of intriguing projects in the past couple of years, including Peter Chan’s Swordsmen, a reimagining of Chang Cheh’s 1967 martial arts classic The One-Armed Swordsman, and Soi Cheang’s The Monkey King 3D, in which Yen’s Monkey King battles with Chow Yun-fat’s Jade Emperor. Before either hits our screens, however, the actor will first star as Guan Yu in The Lost Bladesman, a title role that has baffled Yen no end. “Based on Records of Three Kingdoms, the real historical book, there was very, very little description of him,” he says. “In the previous movies about the Three Kingdoms, like [John Woo’s] Red Cliff, the focus also wasn’t on Guan Yu. Everyone has an image of Guan because [in daily life] we pray to him, we worship him, and we have temples for him.”

Yen is frank to admit that he didn’t know much about the Three Kingdoms history before he took up the role. “Two thirds of the film – I’ll be honest with you – I have no idea what I was doing,” he says. “I have no idea whether I was playing the role properly, because nobody really knows Guan as a person.” He does, however, get Guan’s signature long beard right. “At first, it was very hard to do my lines,” he says, “because once [the beard] is glued to the lips’ area, it’ll fall off when you move [your mouth]. It took me a week or two to get adjusted [to it].”

The film itself, directed by Alan Mak and Felix Chong of Infernal Affairs trilogy and Overheard fame, revolves around the legendary general’s loyalty to his sworn brother and lord Liu Bei, charting the time he spent inside the camp of rival warlord Cao Cao, as well as his death-defying journey back to Liu’s camp. “It’s kind of like a period costume version of Infernal Affairs,” says Yen of the battle of wits between Guan and Cao. While the revelled episode of “Crossing Five Passes and Slaying Six Generals” is easily the action highlight of the new film, it’s his verbal duels with illustrious Chinese actor Jiang Wen, who plays Cao, that should prove the most captivating.

Noting his subtle transition from an action star to an all-round leading man, Yen feels that the audience’s expectation is different from before: “[in the past] all you need for an action guy is good action and not too much of [any] acting. But today, you cannot be a successful action star if you don’t convince the audience with good acting.” As he has been doing for his two other recent films, Swordsmen and The Monkey King, Yen is also serving as action choreographer for The Lost Bladesman. “But of course,” he says, “action will always be part of my most marketable element. When you watch a Donnie Yen film you’ve got to have a lot of good action [scenes], right? I want to make sure that they have to be as realistic as possible.” At least as realistic as his costume beard, we presume.

The Lost Bladesman opens on April 28.