The Many Acts of Hannah

A Hollywood breakthrough, a clothing label, and two kids later, Hannah Quinlivan is on her way

- Andrea Sim

When Hannah Quinlivan converses in Mandarin, there is an unbridled spontaneity to her disposition. Giggles cleave her sentences, a wrinkle of the nose punctuates, and a cheeky pout tells you to take her quip in jest. Her lively Aussie lilt by comparison, seems to keep these idiosyncrasies under wraps.

It’s a natural fragmentation that psychologists have observed amongst multi-lingual individuals, and such code-switching is in the blood for Quinlivan. The 26-year-old actress grew up in Taiwan, is Chinese-Korean on her maternal side, while her paternal lineage is Australian. “I was quite different from the other kids around me at that time, but it was actually a special experience,” she says. “There’s the good and the bad; it’s good to be different, yet I do feel like you don’t know where you belong because you’re half Asian and half white. But everyone treated me nicely.”

Her multi-cultural heritage has also christened her with three names — the Chinese audience refers to Quinlivan as Kun Ling; she also goes by Jen Wu — and a leg up when it came to her Hollywood crossover last year, after easing into the spotlight with variety shows and supporting roles in local TV dramas back home. She’s the trigger-happy assassin Xia in action flick Skyscraper, an antagonist to its lead Dwayne Johnson who plays the U.S. Marine-turned security-consultant Will Sawyer and speaks of the comfort of being able to embody the role without any language barriers.