Actor, Daniel Wu
In less than a decade, 31-year-old actor Daniel Wu has become one of the local film industry’s leading young stars. Not content with a Golden Horse award for his role in “New Police Story,” this month he makes his directorial debut in the mockumentary spoof of his boy band Alive in “The Heavenly Kings.” He talks to Scott Murphy.
I was born in Berkeley, California. It was a great place to grow up because it’s a very liberal city. That environment really formed the way I am now.
I first came here when I was four or five years old. I remember going to the Jumbo Restaurant. We’d stay at my cousin’s house in Kowloon Tong. I just remember cool stuff like the ice-cream man who would be pushing his cart and yelling for us to come and get red bean popsicles.
My parents are super-traditional Chinese. They were born in Shanghai but met in New York City. My dad left Shanghai in 1944 to go to college in Taiwan. Then the Communists arrested his father. He couldn’t go back to Shanghai because his father was a businessman, a capitalist. He got on a boat and ended up at Oklahoma State University getting his Master’s degree. You can just imagine in the early 50s, this Chinese guy in Oklahoma. He said he was on the front page of the newspaper when he arrived in town because he was the first Chinese there.
There was this little punk rock venue called The Gilman in Berkeley. We used to go there all the time and watch this band play. The band was Green Day. There were about 100 people there at the most. We never thought they would blow up. I was into metal and punk. I was into anything rebellious.
The States were very schizophrenic because home would be traditional Chinese and then I’d be out with my friends skateboarding and partying. It was like two worlds. It was hard trying to find a balance between what my parents wanted and what I wanted.
A major event in that period of life was when my mom had an aneurysm. She almost passed away when I was 17. That really freaked me out but it made me become a lot more respectful. I wanted to make her happy.