Bio
Daniel Wu is an American actor, director and producer best known to television viewers for his starring role as Sunny - a prodigiously skilled, merciless killer - in the science fiction martial arts action series Into the Badlands.
Born in Berkeley, California, Wu was raised in nearby Orinda by parents who were Shanghai natives and educated in the States before marrying in New York City and moving westward.
After graduating from the University of Oregon with a degree in architecture, Wu moved to Hong Kong in 1997 to witness the transfer of the territory's sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China.
A film buff (and scholar in the Chinese martial arts discipline of wushu), Wu admired both Jackie Chan and Jet Li as a youngster. At his sister's insistence, he pursued a career in Hong Kong as a model and actor, landing his first professional roles in 1998 in a trio of Chinese-language features, most notably City of Glass (Boli zhi cheng), for which he earned the first of four Hong Kong Film Award nominations, this for Best New Performer.
Since that auspicious 1998 movie debut, Wu has been featured in dozens of films, with his breakout role in Benny Chan's Gen-X Cops.
He received two more Hong Kong Film Award nominations in 2005, for Best Actor in One Night in Mongkok (Wong gok hak yau) and Best Supporting Actor (alongside boyhood idol Chan) in New Police Story (San ging caat goo si), a role that also brought him Taiwan's Golden Horse Award as Best Supporting Actor.
He won the prestigious Hong Kong prize as Best Director for his 2006 feature The Heavenly Kings (Sei dai tin wong), his directorial debut that also brought him the Chinese Film Media Award as Best Director.
His string of international film hits includes Night Corridor (2003, Best Actor nomination at Taiwan's 40th Golden Horse Awards); Frank Coraci's 2004 remake of Around the World in 80 Days (again appearing with Chan); Blood Brothers; Overheard; Overheard 2; Like a Dream (Ru meng, 2009 Golden Horse Award nomination); Quentin Tarantino's presentation of The Man with the Iron Fists; Europa Report; Jackie Chan's Chinese Zodiac; and, most recently, Duncan Jones' sci-fi adventure, Warcraft.
In addition to his work in front of the camera, Wu has produced a number of projects including Night Corridor, Like a Dream, The Heavenly Kings, Tai Chi Zero and Control.