Hi, there.
Welcome to the Donnie Yen Flixsters page. I'm doing my best with this page, but, if there's anything you feel I've missed, you can contact me on my Flixsters page (shown above) and I will see it added. As long as it's useful. I don't need to know what he had for breakfast last week and what his shoe size is. Some things don't need to be known.
Thanks.
Martin. |
Donnie Yen
Early Life: - Born in the Chinese province of Canton, Donnie Yen came to Hong Kong at age two. He lived there until he was eleven, then moved to Boston, MA. He spent his early teenage years there, where his mother, Bow Sim-Mark, a world famous Wushu and Tai Chi master, ran the internationally known Chinese Wushu Research Institute, and martial arts became a major influence in his life. But first he would study classical piano. Favoring Chopin, music became the other inspiration in his life. His father, Klysler Yen, who works as an editor for Sing Tao, an Chinese daily paper, plays the violin and a similar-sounding stringed instrument, the Chinese erh-wu. While his mother sings soprano.
Kung Fu: - Donnie Yen's mother began training her son in the martial arts almost as soon as he could walk. With her he mastered traditional and modern Chinese Wushu and Tai Chi, understanding internal and external principles. As a young teenager hanging out in Boston's Chinatown, Donnie, like most youth, caught every kung fu movie he could. Donnie even took to skipping school to take in several movies a day. Hungry for more knowledge and always the rebel, Donnie began searching out and mastering various martial arts styles. Whatever his friends were studying, he compared notes and explored other schools, too.
Street to Screen: - As a teenager, a rebellious Donnie Yen began running wild on the mean streets of Boston's notorious Combat Zone. Concerned, his parents arranged a detour for him - sending him to Beijing, where he would spend two years training with the famed Beijing Wushu Team, studying with the same master as Jet Li. While the training was intense and rigorous, he wanted more, so his time at the school became only a sojourn. En route back to the U.S, he made a side trip to Hong Kong and was introduced to film director Yuen Woo-ping.
Yuen Woo-ping recognized Donnie's physical abilities; their series of films together led to a new direction in Hong Kong action cinema. Donnie made his lead debut at the tender age of 19 in one of the last traditional martial arts movies, Drunken Tai Chi. The Tiger Cage series, a string of contemporary cops-and-robbers action dramas, hits hard and fast, each film upping the ante action wise. His versatility in the martial arts so apparent in the Tiger Cage series easily carried over into the period martial arts movies.
Breakthrough: - Period martial arts movies returned to Hong Kong action cinema with director Tsui Hark's hit Once Upon a Time in China 2, and Tsui, looking for the ultimate opponent for Jet Li, who had starred in the first movie, chose Donnie. Indeed, Donnie and Jet engage in two duels that have become classic action sequences, and in both Donnie creatively choreographed the movements, inventively using a rolled wet cloth as a weapon. He was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 1992 Hong Kong Film Awards in recognition of his Once Upon a Time in China 2 performance. The film firmly established him as a kung fu movie star. He went on to appear in such highly regarded productions as The Butterfly Sword with Michelle Yeoh, New Dragon Gate Inn with Maggie Cheung, and the cult favorite Iron Monkey, in which he plays Wong Key-ying, father to the young Wong Fei-hung. In Iron Monkey, he staged the well-known Shadowless Kick scene in which he fights renegade Shaolin monks, one of the most influential martial arts scenes of the decade. 
Picture from Iron Monkey.
Action Superstar: - In 2000, Donnie made his American film debut as the immortal Jin Ke in Highlander: Endgame. He has also appeared in Blade II (2002), Hero (2002) with Jet Li and Jackie Chan's Shanghai Knights (2003). Yen has been active in Hong Kong cinema in the 2000s, and can be seen as Chu Zhaonan in Tsui Harks's Seven Swords (2005), and opposite Sammo Hung and Simon Yam in Wilon Yip's brutal crime drama SPL: Sha Po Lang (2005). Both films were featured in at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival. Later that year, Yen starred as Wong Xiao-Long (aka Dragon Wong) in another Yip film, Dragon Tiger Gate, an adaptation of a manhua (Chinese comic book), together with Nicholas Tse. He also worked as action choreographer on 2006's Stormbreaker.
Donnie starred, produced and choreographed the 2007 film Flash Point. The film earned him awards for Best Action Choreography at the Golden Horse Film Awards and the Hong Kong Film Awards. In 2008, he starred in Ip Man, a semi-biographical account of Yip Man, the wing chun master and teacher to Bruce Lee. Ip Man was directed by Wilson Yip, who had already made 3 films with Donnie before (the others being Kill Zone, Dragon Tiger Gate, Flash Point). Ip Man became Donnie's highest grossing film when it was released in 2008.
On October 18th 2010, production of The Monkey King began, with Donnie playing the leading role of the Monkey King. The film will filmed in 3-D.
Picture from Ip Man 2 - with co-star Huang Xiaoming, who plays Wong Leung. | VITAL STATS | Eye color: Dark
| | Height: 5"8 | Nickname(s): The Don
| Education:
| | Family: Cissy Wang (Spouse), Man Cheuk, Jasmine and James (Children) | Resides in: Hong Kong
| | Religious affiliations: | Political affiliation:
| Personal interests/hobbies: Piano
| | Charities/Causes: | | |
