WHERE THE ACTION IS
‘ X- 2’ AND ‘ ARROW’ STAR KELLY HU JOINS THE CROWD AT STEEL CITY CON
Kelly Hu was almost the woman who killed George Lucas. It was close, she says.
The year was 2007, and the actress and the “Star Wars” creator were “playing chicken,” coming to a turn in a pro- celebrity race in Long Beach, Calif. “We were on the straightaway, and neither of us wanted to slow down for the turn. Then I slammed on the brake, and he went into the pylons.”
For a few scary moments, there was no voice buzzing over her headset, as everyone ran to Lucas. Luckily, he was good to go, and so was Hu.
When the Steel City Con celebrates its 30th anniversary this weekend, Kelly Hu will be on the celebrity guest list that includes George “Mr. Sulu” Takei, “Back to the Future’s” Lea Thompson, and a quartet of “Sons of Anarchy” actors, led by Ron “Hellboy” Perlman.
Hu made perhaps her biggest splash — or should we say, slash — in “X- 2: X- Men United,” when the claws came out for her epic fight with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine. Hu had been a Miss Teen USA in 1985 and Miss Hawaii USA in 1993 before landing regular TV roles on “Nash Bridges” and “Martial Law.” Her breakout movie roles came in “The Scorpion King” and “X- 2,” and she has more recently been seen on TV in “The Orville” and as part of the DC universe as China White, for The CW’s “Arrow.”
Growing up in Hawaii, she did not see many people who looked like her on TV, and there were no thoughts of becoming an action star. Her only recognition of seeing Asian actors at all were the films of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, and the movie musical “Flower Drum Song” and “The World of Suzie Wong,” both starring Nancy Kwan.
“She was my idol,” Hu said. “Nancy Kwan was beautiful, and she sang and she danced, and I was a huge MGM musical fan.”
Comic books were not on her radar. “I didn’t even know who the X- Men were until the first movie came out,” she says. “But that role was especially awesome to do because of all the amazing people involved, all these Oscar- caliber actors. ... It was really awesome to be a part of something so big.”
Hu, 51, found her first regular TV gig as a doctor, on the soap opera “Sunset Beach.” She found the soap schedule “so hard,” and her scripts would be filled with phonetically spelled medical terms, so she couldn’t look up what she was saying, at a time when there were no computers, “or at least I didn’t know of any,” she says.
“Thank God I got fired after six months,” Hu admits now. And six months later, she became a series regular on “Nash Bridges,” before becoming a series lead in “Martial Law.”
Although she is known for her martial arts moves, Hu started relatively late. Her mother, whom she describes as “an old- fashioned Chinese mom,” put her in ballet and her brother in martial arts classes.
It was in her late 20s when she attended a black- belt ceremony for her roommate, that she found herself weeping. “It was so beautiful,” she recalls. “I met my teacher, my shihan, right then and came to the class the next Monday. I was hooked.”
Moving from Hawaii to the pageant scene to Hollywood, Hu says she hasn’t faced the type of discrimination encountered by many Asian actors on the mainland. The idea hadn’t even crossed her mind until she became a contestant in the Miss Teen USA pageant and her mother told her, “Don’t cry when you don’t win, because America is not ready for an Oriental Miss Teen USA.”
It was only after she won the pageant, and heard from others expressing their pride, that it became apparent that her win was a breakthrough.
It’s rare that she has been out of work since that time, including her active voiceover career in shows such as TV’s animated “Tangled.” She’s busy but not too busy to enjoy life between gigs or coming to comic- cons like the one in Monroeville. Of upcoming projects, she can say only that her characters on “Arrow” and as Admiral Ozawa on “The Orville” are not dead.
“I always seem to be working,” she says, “but it’s never on stuff I can talk about.”
What she can say is she considers her career is in “a sweet spot. — I’m not so famous that I can’t go grocery shopping without being asked for an autograph, but I get to go to comic- cons and meet fans, so I feel that I’m in the best position I can be for an actor.”