Eugenia Yuan is the daughter of a famous Hong Kong actress and martial arts legend Cheng Pei Pei, who portrayed Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Eugenia didn’t follow her mother’s footsteps immediately and purposely avoided acting instead pursuing such interests as gymnastics. In fact, she was on the US National team for rhythmic gymnastics!

Eugenia finally caught the acting bug when she tried acting in her first film Charlotte Sometimes. She was the highlight of the film but not so much her acting which was rough at times but just her screen presence and beauty.

Since Hollywood wasn’t beating down her door after her debut, Eugenia went to Hong Kong and did some films.She won the Hong Kong equivalent of an Oscar for Best Newcomer for her role in a trio of short horror films called Three. In that role, she had to lie motionless while nude in a bathtub (as can be seen in the photo above). Eugenia also starred in a martial arts film Flying Dragon, Leaping Tiger and another horror film with Shu Qui, the sequel Eye 2.

Eugenia returned back home to the US and chose a quirky role as the title character in Mail Order Wife. She discusses this role among other things in a 15 minute long RealVideo interview including a text transcription.

She also did another interview at Giant Robot.

A recent article about her yearning for some romance is actually what inspired this posting.

I didn’t find much in the way of good pictures of Eugenia Yuan doing an image search on google.

As far as upcoming films, Eugenia can be seen in a small role in Memoirs of a Geisha where she befriended her favorite Chinese actress, Gong Li.