China’s go-to English bad guy Kevin Lee: ‘I’m happy to play a villain’

The English actor, who has worked with Chinese directors from Jackie Chan to Zhang Yimou, reveals how a chance meeting at the visa office in Beijing changed his life

If the Chinese film industry needs a stock foreign villain, I'm their first port of call. I was a Gatling gun-wielding mercenary in 2015's Wolf Warrior, one of the first of the new wave of military blockbusters, and a hitman in Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Yoga in 2017, among many others. And I recently played an American colonel in the Korean war in The Battle at Lake Changjin, the most expensive and successful Chinese film ever: it made $909m (675m) last year.

It's surreal - coming from humble beginnings in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire - to find myself in the middle of a massive field in Hubei province filming the likes of The Battle at Lake Changjin. You'd think you were in a real-life warzone - there were hundreds of tanks supplied by the government. I grew up watching Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and Jet Li movies, which kickstarted my passion for China. I originally came here to study martial arts in 2004. Then I came back 10 years later to work as a financial consultant, which I didn't really enjoy.