Ming-Na Wen
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ming-Na ("enlightenment") was born on the island of Macau, forty miles
from Hong Kong. Her mother, Lin Chan Wen, divorced her father when
Ming-Na was only a toddler. She has an older brother named Jonathan.
After the divorce, they moved to Hong Kong where her mother became a
nurse. There her mother met Soo Lim Yee, a U.S. businessman. They soon
married, and at four years, Ming-Na moved with her family to Queens,
New York. Five years later, they transferred to Yee's hometown of
Pittsburgh where his family runs the Chinatown Inn restaurant. Jonathan
and half-brother, Leong, now manage this restaurant. Struggling to fit
in at school, she changed her name to Maggie & Doris. She found a love
for acting while appearing in a third grade Easter play, where she
played a klutzy bunny. Her mother was not excited about her desire to
pursue acting, She preferred that she go into medicine. Nonetheless,
Ming-Na graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in
theatre. She got her first acting job in 1988 on the soap
As the World Turns (1956).
Her big break came when she was cast in
Le club de la chance (1993). When
she needed a ride to the premiere of the film, her acting instructor
sent one of his students,
Eric Michael Zee. The two started
dating in 1994 after Ming-Na moved permanently to Los Angeles and
married in 1995, dropping her last name, Wen, at that time. She says
she is now like Ann-Margret. Zee is a
screenwriter and, with Ming-Na, manages At Last, a boy band.
