Smoking wins role for `Golden Gun` martial arts queen

Smoking is bad for your health, but it was good for Hong Kong martial arts queen Yuen Qiu’s acting career - reports the Martial Arts Newsroom.

Yuen, who appeared in the 1974 James Bond film “The Man with the Golden Gun,” landed a role in “Kung Fu Hustle,” which opens here on Thursday, because the director liked the way she smoked, the South China Morning Post reported Wednesday.

Yuen, a popular stunt woman and kung fu actress in the 70s, said she was accompanying a friend to an audition when director Stephen Chow saw her smoking, the paper said. Chow was looking for someone who smoked the way she did and urged her to join the film, the paper quoted her as saying.

Chow, who directed and starred in the 2001 hit “Shaolin Soccer,” asked her to play a landlady in his new comedy about gangsters who try to take over a neighborhood full of kung fu masters disguised as ordinary residents.

Yuen recalled her role in the Bond film.

“I remember the film producers coming to Hong Kong looking for a girl who could fight,” the paper quoted her as saying. “I went to the audition, got the gig and was flown to Thailand to do this part, which involved me and this local schoolgirl rescuing Roger Moore.”

She added, “I had one line, I think _ ‘Hello’ or something. I forgot what it was.”

Thanks to `Kyvan` for the alert.

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