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Maggie Q

Spring 2010
Maggie Q: More than Meets the Eye
by June Chow Babtiwale
WITH AN IMPRESSIVE RESUME OF ASIAN FILM CREDITS AS WELL AS HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTERS SUCH AS RUSH HOUR 2, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3 AND DIE HARD 4, FORMER MODEL-TURNED-ACTION STAR MAGGIE Q REVEALS HOW HER INITIAL QUEST FOR SURVIVAL TURNED INTO A CAREER OF A LIFETIME.

Maggie Q is not your typical actress. Sure, she’s graceful, poised, and gorgeous on screen. She exudes the same confidence and fiery charisma that many young, talented starlets possess, especially those at the height of their game. Yet, upon meeting her, one gets the sense that this 30-year old has lived passionately, that she hasn’t always had things go her way, and that she’s gotten to where she’s at only after winning some hard-earned battles.
Born Margaret Denise Quigley to a Polish-Irish-French-American father and a Vietnamese mother in Honolulu, Hawaii, Maggie Q experienced a fairly normal childhood. The youngest of five children, she grew up as an athlete in a “beautiful place where you understand the sense of family and community, you appreciate nature and the environment, and [you gain] core values.” The adventurous spirit wanted more out of life, however, and headed to Asia at a mere 18 years of age. Acting more on impulse than through a well-executed plan, the lithe Eurasian beauty dove headfirst into modeling. “I was essentially a broke university student at the time. Even though I had a scholarship for athletics, it was a pretty expensive school, and with the tuition I had to pay, I still wasn’t making ends meet. I had a [model] girlfriend who brought me to Asia with her, and I went kind of as her friend and as a ‘hopefully-we’ll-see-what-happens’ sort of thing, and that’s how the whole thing began.” Her initial foray was wrought with many challenges. “It was awful, because I wasn’t that girl who had a book and could walk into a meeting and go, ‘Oh, look at all my amazing photos.’ I had no photos, because I wasn’t a model, go figure!” she recalls, laughing. Reconciling other people’s notions and measures of self-worth was also difficult. “The rejection and the business are tough. Modeling is a great job for girls at the top. It’s not a great job for everyone else. People are judging you on one thing, which is basically a gift from your parents. That was tough for me, especially as a strong woman, which I’ve always been, and as a smart woman, which I know I am and I’ve always been. Psychologically, it’s hard.”
Quigley attempted to make a name for herself as a model first in Taiwan but got the cold shoulder. “At the time [during the 1990’s], they were very interested in white girls. They were not into my middle-of-the-road look. I remember going into meetings, and immediately they would look at me and not even give me a second thought. I would walk in, and they would say, ‘Get out. We didn’t ask for you – we don’t want exotic. We want Caucasian. Do you know what Caucasian means?’ It was rejection, after rejection, after rejection.” The tide began to turn, however, when she decided to book a one-way ticket to Hong Kong after a woman she met at one of the night markets in Taiwan convinced her to try her luck in the more “cosmopolitan” Hong Kong. “I think she sensed how innately sad I was, having no family, no friends, and not being able to speak the language,” Quigley explains. “I was like, ‘You know what? They hate me here and I’m not doing anything, so what’s the point?’” Although she despised Hong Kong when she first landed – it was wintertime when she arrived and she was nearly penniless AND freezing – Quigley says she ended up finding the best friends she’s ever had in her life in Hong Kong. It was the dawn of a new era, though little did she know just how far her star would rise.
Her first stints included appearing in bank and toothpaste commercials; it wasn’t until the late 1990’s that Quigley got her first role in a Chinese-language television series. There was just one small problem: she couldn’t yet speak Chinese. “Sometimes they dubbed the Chinese in. What they would also do is give me as little dialogue as possible, and then I would go back and try to learn it phonetically and try to create my own alphabet. I found it so hard. What was even more interesting to me was [the fact] that they would tell me how they were going to make it work, and I [thought] they were crazy. I was like, ‘Why do we have to make it work? Why do you want me at all? Why don’t you just get a Chinese actress?’ I felt really out of place, and I didn’t think anybody liked me or wanted to see more of me. That took a lot of getting used to.”
The way Quigley speaks is intensely familiar, as if you’re chatting with your best friend about the day she’s just had. You can tell that she is comfortable in her own skin, and as a result, you’re instantly and consciously at ease. Punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter, her bubbly authenticity, coupled with her casual humility, makes one nearly forget that they are talking to an actress who has not only prevailed against a nearly impossible mission of acceptance in the Asian film industry, but who also has worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. On the topic of missions impossible, I ask her what it’s like to work with Tom Cruise and Jackie Chan. “If you talk to anyone who has worked with Jackie, one of the things you’re definitely going to get out of him is a work ethic, unlike anyone else in the business. Jackie is not where Jackie is for no reason. He is the hardest-working man on the planet,” she reveals. “When I work with people like Tom or other big actors in Hollywood, I find that there’s always one underlying quality that they’ll have, and it’s that work ethic. I used to tell Tom that he was the American Jackie. And he would laugh and say, ‘I LOVE that comparison!’ And I’d tell him, ‘I love that you love it, because you’re both so incredibly professional.’ [Both] also really [enjoy] what they do, and they understand and appreciate the [challenges]. And that’s invaluable, because you can work with really talented people who are really hard to work with, and it’s REALLY not fun!” Quigley exclaims, laughing. So does she do all her own stunts? “I do most of them,” she proclaims. “On ‘Mission Impossible,’ the only ones I wouldn’t do are the ones that [Director] JJ [Abrams] threatened my life with if I did. He was like, ‘You’re absolutely not doing that,’ and we would get into arguments. But he was right.” (Quigley’s stunt double for the movie actually ended up breaking her ankle during one of the action sequences.) “I come from the Asian film industry, [where] there are no slouches. I’m so used to doing all my own work. I also feel like when you go to see a film of mine, and because it’s something that I’m known for in terms of the action genre, I feel like I owe my audience a performance that is me, that is genuine and true, and I think that if it isn’t, it isn’t fair.” Does she ever worry, though, that with all this kicking butt, she’ll be stereotyped as the sexy Asian chick who just so happens to also impress with her martial arts skills? “I think it’s a stereotype that exists because ignorant people exist,” Quigley explains. “When you don’t want to get into something deeper and you want to make it feel very comfortable to you, then you give it a broad category, which is, ‘Oh, she’s Asian and she fights.’ I understand where the stereotypes come from, but if we as Asian-Americans in Hollywood want that stereotype to change, we have to start making different decisions. I enjoy doing action movies and kicking butt, but that’s just me. It has nothing to do with me being Asian.” So what does it mean to be an Asian female in Hollywood, I ask. “We [can’t] just show up and knock on people’s doors and go, ‘I’m here, I can do whatever I want!’ That’s just not the way it works. There are many, many years of work and movies you have to do [in order] to develop these relationships. Once you do, you gain the notoriety and the power to be able to make different decisions. That’s always been the path that I’ve created and wanted. I think that for many Asians, they do want to see you in more than just action films, but in Hollywood, they want you to do certain things when you are of a certain race or look a certain way, and it takes years to get out of that category.”
Quigley may candid in her description of the challenges she’s experienced both in the Asian as well as American film industries when it comes to typecasting on the big screen, but her innate optimism is apparent. “Being an American, working in Asia, and then coming back to the States, there has been a bridge built. There are a lot of crossovers happening lately, which is a wonderful and beautiful thing, because the world is getting smaller. The problem with Asian films right now – and not just Asian films made in Asia, but also Asian films shown in the United States – is, for some reason, we don’t tell our story in terms of biographies and modern-day heroes. The Chinese, for example, do an excellent job of telling ancient stories, but we really don’t do stories about modern heroes and about amazing, strong, eloquent people -- especially Asian women – whose stories need to be told. One of the things I want to do in my career is tell our stories.”
So what’s next in the immediate future for Miss Maggie Q? This summer she’ll be starring in the action-thriller, “Priest,” alongside Paul Bettany (of “A Beautiful Mind” and “The Da Vinci Code”) and Cam Gigandet (best known for his role in “Twilight”). Quigley describes the film as a “vampire western” about a rogue priest who avenges his niece’s kidnapping by going after the band of vampires responsible. “For an action movie, the script was so wonderfully layered and deep, and there were so many flushed-out, great characters that meant a lot to the story,” she says enthusiastically. “It’s a huge modern metaphor for all the things that are happening today with religion and people, and if we don’t start thinking outside the box, what the world will turn into.” The actress has also delved recently into producing and directing, enabling her to switch gears and experience things from the other side of the camera. Having co-produced the 2007 animal rights documentary “Earthlings,” Quigley is currently at the helm of the film’s follow-up, “Unity.” “ ‘Unity’ is less spotlit,” she explains. “There is some animal stuff in there obviously, because that’s always our agenda, but it’s more about consciousness and raising that consciousness, and what it will mean to the world if we can all achieve that. A lot of people could give a hoot about animal rights, a lot of people don’t care about the environment, but you know what a lot of people care about? Themselves. If you can really talk to people who have kids and want a future for them, and you’re talking about that and preservation…that’s one of my goals this year too.”

It turns out that when she isn’t wielding weapons or kicking butt on-screen, Quigley devotes her energy to several animal rights and humane causes, having appeared in several ads for PETA Asia-Pacific. The staunch vegetarian is also currently involved in five or six different animal rights and humane advocacy groups around the world, including the Animals Asia Foundation which specifically rescues bears and also domestic animals, an ocean protection society called Sea Shepherd, as well as human rights efforts in Burma and Africa, orchestrated through the US Campaign for Burma in Washington, D.C. and Kageno, respectively. Quigley sums it up best when she describes her family’s stance on her accomplishments: “They could care less if I was on the cover of another magazine. They are proud of the perseverance. And that’s the greatest. That’s what I want to be proud of at the end of the day.” From the looks of it, Maggie Q already has more than enough to be proud of.