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SINGAPORE: She might be a Korean sassy girl kicking vampire butt in Hollywood, but in Singapore, she was an ice queen a little lost in translation.
Korean actress-model Jun Ji-hyun was in Singapore recently to promote her debut Hollywood action flick Blood: The Last Vampire, based on the cult anime movie and TV series of the same name.
But even as the leggy 28-year-old duly smiled and nodded through the press conference held at Capella in Sentosa like any young starlet should and would, one still couldn’t shake off a sense of detachment and the stock running-through-the-paces.
Perhaps it could be attributed to her difficulty in expressing her emotions in English, as she explained via a smattering of slightly American-accented English and her interpreter.
“It’s very awkward for me, even though I understand when other people speak English,” she said.
The language barrier didn’t stop her from adopting Gianna Jun as her Hollywood name, though. “It sounds similar to my Korean name. ‘Ji-Hyun-a’ - that’s they way my friends and family call me back home.”
Playing a hard-fighting, 400-year-old, half-human, half-vampire hybrid who is on a revenge warpath meant that Jun trained industriously under the famed martial arts choreographer Corey Yuen.
But that doesn’t mean she has any intention of being Hollywood’s next Michelle Yeoh or be pigeon-holed as an action star. “I won’t limit myself to Hollywood or Korea. What’s most important to me is script and character,” she told TODAY.
Jun citing Cameron Diaz as one of her Hollywood idols (“She has both attractiveness and the body, and is full of bright energy”) and said the Asian stars she would most like to work with in future are “Gong Li and Tony Leung”.
And as for directors? “I would really like to work with the directors of critically-acclaimed Korean films The Chaser and Old Boy,” she shared. “I really like their work.”
Maybe they’ll hire you if you smile just a little, Sweetie.
Blood: The Last Vampire is in cinemas now
- TODAY/yb
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