HONG KONG'S AGE LESS ACTION HERO

He's the last of a golden era of martial arts stars. But even as he approaches 60, DONNIE YEN-who stars in the new John Wick film-is still kicking ass.

- OLIVER FRANKLIN-WALLIS

DONNIE YEN HAS BEEN punched, in the name of moviemaking, more times than he can count. Kicked. Burnt. Sliced open. Thrown from horses. You name it, he’s hurt it. “I have so many injuries,” Yen says, laughing. It comes with the job—you don’t carve out a 40-year career kicking ass in Hong Kong action cinema without also getting your own kicked occasionally.

Yen could regale you with stories of his scrapes for hours. But for brevity’s sake, here’s just one. Yen was on the set of Tsui Hark’s now classic 1992 sequel Once Upon a Time in China II, filming the kind of action scene they really don’t make anymore. Yen and fellow martial arts legend Jet Li go at it with bamboo poles, literally bringing down the building around them. Bravura martial arts choreography. Ridiculous athleticism. Zero CGI. Anyway: “[Li] hurt himself. So he had a stunt double wired up,” Yen explains. “We’d broken each other’s staffs, so we were holding two, one in each hand.” The prop staffs weren’t up to the task, so they were using real bamboo, “solid, heavy as hell”.

The shot was simple: Yen had to block an incoming strike with his pole, while keeping the straight face of a badass wushu master. But the stunt double couldn’t hit the mark. “After 20 or 50 moves, he keeps missing,” Yen says. Last take, the guy overshot and cracked Yen in the face, slicing open his brow a quarter-inch from his eye, nearly blinding him. “I saw stars. Blood sprays like a horror movie.” An ambulance came; Yen received six stitches. The next day, the director called. “ ‘Donnie, can you come in and shoot a close-up? It’s okay—I’m going to shoot you from one side.’ ” Yen laughs.