Donnie Yen
Actor and choreographer
Actor and choreographer, the first to systematically bring MMA and ground fighting into Hong Kong action.
Quick Facts
Hong KongBiography
He grew up with his mother Bow-sim Mark, a respected tai chi and wushu teacher, training in both from childhood. He later added boxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and MMA. As a choreographer he pushed locks and ground work into Hong Kong film — until then the genre stood almost entirely on strikes and kicks.
Associated Martial Arts
The collective name for hundreds of Chinese fighting traditions. It has no founder: Bodhidharma is a legend spread only from the early 20th century.
MMANotable figure→A full-contact sport combining strikes, throws and ground fighting; today the most widely followed fighting format in the world.
Tai ChiNotable figure→The Chinese internal art documented from the seventeenth century. Its founder is Chen Wangting; Zhang Sanfeng is a nineteenth-century legend.
Filmography
A screen role does not mean the person actually practises the art — that is listed above.