• Born in Canton, China, Donnie Yen (甄子丹) moved with his family to Hong Kong at the age of two, then moved to Boston, Massachusetts nine years later. His mother was a martial arts master and ran a training institute.
She began teaching Donnie martial arts as soon as he could walk. Understandably, he became enthralled by martial arts movies and even skipped school to watch them. When he started to become an out-of-control, rebellious teenager, his parents sent him to Beijing to study with the same master as Jet Li. After two years, he was due to return to the States, but stopped off in Hong Kong where he met film director Yuen Wo-ping, who had launched Jackie Chan’s career and was looking for a new protégé. Yen made his film debut in 1982 at the age of 19. As of 2018, Donnie Yen’s net worth is $40 million.
The popularity of martial arts movies in Asia guaranteed Yen steady work and he stayed on, appearing in 16 more movies over the next 12 years, including Once Upon a Time in China II (1992) with Jet Li. In 1995, Yen became a regular on the TV series Jing wu men, but continued to work in films as well. By 1997, he’d formed his own film company, Bullet Films, which produced his directorial debut, Legend of the Wolf.
His role in Highlander: Endgame (2000), starring Adrian Paul and Christopher Lambert, marked his first appearance in an English-speaking film. The following year, Yen directed himself in the Cantonese film Fist of Fury: The Sequel (2001), but returned to English-speaking films with Guillermo del Toro’s Blade II (2002), starring Wesley Snipes. Yen reunited with Jet Li for Hero, which was filmed in Mandarin and released in China in 2002, then released around the world in 2003/2004.
VDO
When Donnie Yen (甄子丹) Goes Out in Public
