China Chow cont
Her exotic looks are a combination of Chinese with a dash of English on her dad's side, and Japanese and German from her mother's family. Her beauty and cafe-society pedigree have won her photo shoots with big names like Mario Testino, Arthur Elgort, Sante D'Orazio and Richard Avedon, who snapped Chow for a Shiseido campaign (a job her mother and aunt, Bonny Lutz, also did). Chow says the modeling shoots were a good experience, but she refuses to schlep to any castings or cattle calls. "I just finished college," she reasons. "I have a brain in my head and I'm not going to let myself be judged by the way I look. I think it's actually very insulting."
For the last three years, Chow has been dubbed New York's latest It Girl, appearing regularly in social columns and posing for fashion glossies and on billboards for Tommy Hilfiger Jeans. When her cinematic debut, The Big Hit, hits the multiplex this month, Chow's celebrity status is bound to balloon. "People have been taking my picture and writing stories about me, but it didn't make sense because I didn't really do anything until just last year. But I went with it because it was fun or whatever," she admits. "But now it's O.K. because I'm promoting the movie instead of myself."
In The Big Hit, Chow plays Keiko Nishi, the strong-willed daughter of a Japanese electronics mogul who's snatched from her college by a hit man, played by Mark Wahlberg, posing as her chauffeur. The kidnapping gets hairy when it turns out that Keiko's father is actually bankrupt and that Wahlberg's mafioso boss is Keiko's adoring godfather. Amid the chaos, Keiko and her captor fall in love. Rumors swirled around the set that Wahlberg and Chow became an item while shooting the action/comedy in Toronto last summer. "No comment!" Chow snaps briskly even before she's asked the exact nature of her off-screen friendship with the buff tighty-whitey model turned serious actor. "I just don't want to talk about Mark at all."
Chow does agree to discuss her working relationship with Wahlberg, who appears in almost all of Keiko's scenes. "Mark helped me a lot, thank God," she says. "I saw Boogie Nights and I told him, 'I'm really glad I didn't see that movie before we worked together because I would have been completely intimidated!' During rehearsal I couldn't tell the difference between when Mark was talking to me and when he was reading lines. That's quite a talent, right?" Later, during dinner, Chow calls a mystery friend via cell phone, leaving this message: "Hi, honey. It's me. I'll page you when I'm done with my interview. I love you." The odds are those melodious words were for Wahlberg's ears.
"What's cool is that I'm not just reading roles that are 'the young Japanese girl' or 'young Asian girl.' It's just 'young girl.' That's a relief."
Making The Big Hit was "the most amazing experience" of Chow's life. "I did something I had never done, which is act," she says. "I went to a city I didn't know with a bunch of people I had never met for three months. Everything was completely foreign to me. Usually I'm such a wimp that I would never put myself in that situation, but I'm so glad I did."
If The Big Hit is a box-office knockout, Chow could be on her way to a promising career in an industry that's short on Asian-American actresses. Chow says she hasn't yet been pigeonholed as "the geisha girl who doesn't talk much or some karate-chopping chick or a hooker or a masseuse. What's cool," she points out, "is that I'm not just reading roles that are 'the young Japanese girl' or 'young Asian girl.' It's just 'young girl.' That's a relief because I didn't know what would happen." Admittedly frightened by the audition process, Chow has only gone on one audition since wrapping The Big Hit. "I'm not in any hurry," she says.
Chow points out that 1998 is the year of the tiger in the Chinese zodiac calendar. "It's my year, so I'm really happy. It's not going to be the year of the tiger again for 12 years, and I'll be 36 then, so I'd better use this wisely. Apparently when it's your year, it doesn't mean you're going to do extremely well, it just means it's a year for introspection. So you build your strength. Next year I'll really be kick-***!"
This story was published on Apr. 1, 1998
source: papermag.com