BEIJING — Maggie Q is getting serious.
After taking on mostly action roles, and catching Hollywood’s attention with consecutive turns starring opposite Tom Cruise in “Mission: Impossible III” and Bruce Willis in “Live Free or Die Hard,” Q (nee Quigley) chose her latest role, in Chinese director Tian Zhuangzhuang’s “The Warrior and the Wolf,” as a step towards the more dramatic.
Q described the directorial style of Tian (“The Blue Kite”) as “very male, but this is very different and very intense,” she said, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at the Beijing premiere of “Warrior.” “It was good to work with someone who was as nervous as I was,” Q said, with the director and her stepping outside of their comfort zones.
“Warrior” was filmed in the recently restive Xinjiang region in northwestern China, nine hours outside of the capital Urumqi, which saw ethnic riots in July that left almost 200 dead.
Q was in Beijing after doing just over a week on “Priest,” a “vampire Western” directed by Scott Stewart, best known for his work at visual effects house The Orphanage. It is adapted from a TokyoPop graphic novel, and is due in 2010.
However, after her role as a priestess in the fang flick, Q is looking towards her “dream project.” She said only that it was being written for her, but that it is “definitely serious. Incredibly serious.”
