“It meant a lot to me because I was on that precipice,” the actress says. “It sounds really weird and cheesy because it’s just entertainment, but I think you need a really thick skin and a lot of mental strength just to get through the process before you’ve even got a job.”

Kwan was born in London to a Thai mother and a Malaysian father. She grew up playing piano and violin, and studied at the Royal College of Music and Oxford University. While completing her undergraduate degree, she took a year-long break and decided to take up acting professionally, having always been in love with film.

“It’s always been a field that I really wanted to go into,” says the twenty-something Kwan. “[But] my parents were very reticent for a long time. I feel like that’s a normal thing to say, if you come from an Asian family.”

For Kwan, this was to be expected – the only famous female British Asian actresses at the time she made her decision were Marvel’s Gemma Chan and Harry Potter star Katie Leung.

“In the UK, if you’re Asian, you don’t really become actors. You don’t really see Asian people on screen, at least [not] East and Southeast Asians,” Kwan says.

Eventually, she managed to convince her parents to let her take up a master’s degree at the Guildford School of Acting.

A few months later, in October 2021, Kwan got the call from her agent about John Wick. At the time, she had no idea what film it was for – the project had been given a code name – and it was only when she was on set in Paris and Yen sat in the make-up chair next to her that the penny dropped.

“I was just kind of like, ‘I literally don’t know what to do with my life’,” Kwan says. “His movie Hero is one of the most influential movies to me.”

Speaking ahead of the film’s debut in cinemas on March 23, Kwan is coy about the details of her character, but divulges that all of Mia’s scenes connect to Yen’s character in some way.

“She’s not had a very easy life. For her, the art that she makes – how she expresses herself – is a way to connect with people, and she’s always yearning for that connection,” Kwan says.

One of Kwan’s fondest memories while filming John Wick: Chapter 4 was the moment she played the violin in front of the Paris Opera. Given the scale of the film set, a large crowd had gathered to watch – “the most people I’ve ever seen in my life”.

“There’s almost a bit of dissociation where you’re like, ‘This can’t be real. None of this is real’,” Kwan says.

The opportunity to combine her love of acting and her classical music training was particularly meaningful to Kwan. “If you had told 15-year-old me that it would all be worth it one day, never in my wildest dreams would I believe you.”

Among them, Kwan is the only Southeast Asian. “It’s still not the easiest industry for anybody who’s any kind of minority,” she says.

“But what’s really cool when you watch it is, not just with Donnie Yen, but also Hiroyuki Sanada and Rina [Sawayama], when they have their storylines in Osaka and so on, you really get a sense that [this film is honouring] either the culture of the place, or at least the visual martial arts and film tradition that is connected to them.”

She points to the choreography of Yen’s martial arts and sword-fighting scenes as an example. “It’s not just the idea that, ‘Yay, there are lots more Asian people in it,’” she says. “It’s nice to see those Asian actors being put in and it doesn’t feel like virtue signalling.”

Despite the film’s 169-minute run time, Kwan says its length is not gratuitous, and that fans might even consider watching it more than once to catch all the details.

And she adds: “Stay until the very end. The very, very, very end.”

John Wick: Chapter 4 opened in Asia and Europe on March 23, and opens in North America on March 24