| Emigrated to Taiwan with her family at the age of 7, Li is a fluent Mandarin speaker. Practicing dance, she entered a dance contest held in Hong Kong, and was chanced upon by a producer, who referred her to Chui Siu Ming. They met and clicked, and Li was asked to star in her first TV drama series. Perhaps it was due to her constant public exposure in dance that Li was not camera shy at all. What she couldn't get used to was handling dialogues in Cantonese. She was only 15 then.
After her break in TV, she had her first movie outing in Tsui Hark's "Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain" (1983). She was fascinated and amused by what went on in the film. As it was a period sword fighting piece, actors had to be "wired" or "hanged" in midair for flying scenes. Li never seemed to tire of being "wired," she found it a lot of fun.
Li's background in dance has helped her in her agility when doing action flicks. In no time, she became the hot commodity of martial arts films, and her popularity extended to East Asia as well. She starred in a series of "Angel" cop movies, and shared billings with Japanese mega-star Hideki Saijo (Angel 1988).
There was nothing new about being black and bruised when one stars in the action genre. But whilst filming "Devil Hunters" in 1989, an explosion went haywire, and Li, along with her co-stars Ray Lui Leung Wai and Sibelle Hu (Wu Wai-Chung) were injured seriously. Fortunately they had all recuperated from it.
Yet, at that time, Li felt lost. She was afraid that it was the end of her acting career. Though bed-ridden, she never gave up hope. She kept on telling herself that she would get well - and indeed she did. The accident has made her realize that willpower is the driving force for accomplishing anything.
- Adapted from the biography section of the HK release of The Protector (1985) |