• Birth name:

  Eugenia Yuen Lai-Kei

• Date of Birth:

A Hong Kong Oscar winner and daughter of martial arts legend Pei-pei Cheng, Eugenia Yuan started out her career not as an actress, but as a champion rhythmic gymnast for the U.S. Olympic Team.Eventually, career switching from an athlete to on-screen ingénue, Eugenia made her screen debut co-starring with her mother in the martial arts picture Flying Dragon, Leaping Tiger (2002) (V). She caught the eye of movie executives on both sides of world who offered to groom to take inherit her mother... more

A Hong Kong Oscar winner and daughter of martial arts legend Pei-pei Cheng, Eugenia Yuan started out her career not as an actress, but as a champion rhythmic gymnast for the U.S. Olympic Team.Eventually, career switching from an athlete to on-screen ingénue, Eugenia made her screen debut co-starring with her mother in the martial arts picture Flying Dragon, Leaping Tiger (2002) (V). She caught the eye of movie executives on both sides of world who offered to groom to take inherit her mother's kung fu crown.Eugenia opted instead to co-star in the dark, low-budget feature Charlotte Sometimes which garnered an honor at the Independent Spirit Awards and was publicly championed by national film critic Roger Ebert and featured in his own film festival.Eugenia returned to Hong Kong to star in the feature collection of three dramatic shorts by heavy weight local directors entitled Three... Extremes where she nabbed the Hong Kong Film Award as "Best Newcomer" (Hong Kong's equivalent of the Academy Awards).Soon after, Hollywood director Doug Liman hand-picked her for the title role of the cult hit mockumentary Mail Order Wife (2004), which brought her to national attention when she was named as a "Rising Star/Screen Acting Discovery" by the Hamptons International Film Festival where the film premiered.She was later nominated for Hong Kong's prestigious Golden Horse Award for her starring role in Gin gwai 2 (2004) and made memorable turns in John Dahl's The Great Raid (2005) and, most recently, the Oscar-winning Memoirs of a Geisha.Eugenia continues to shuttle back and forth between Los Angeles, New York, and Hong Kong to take Studio, Chinese-language and American independent roles alike including the 2007 Gotham Awards winning film Choking Man. She also co-stars with Hong Kong icon Tony Leung Ka Fai in the Hong Kong thriller Zhan. gu (2007).