You were born in America but have Korean heritage - what did you feel was relevant to bring to your character, Zao?
Being an American is such a rich environment, because there's so many people from other countries and cultures, and through that you're able to see other people's experiences. I wanted to bring that international sense to this situation, because it is pretty sensitive. Part of my heritage being Korean, it's going to be interesting going to Korea and answering these questions dealing with North and South Korea. It's difficult to deal with at times, this expectation. Being Asian, every single Asian person in the world expects you to represent them, you know?
We've had Jaws with his teeth and Scaramanga with his three nipples. Your character has another potentially iconic facet - the diamond-studded face. That must have involved an awful lot of sitting in the make-up chair...
Really all the credit goes to a genius, my make-up artist Paul England. I was really in his hands. In a lot of ways, the make-up was the character. There was the possibility that it could be the joke of it all, because nobody else looks like this. To have somebody this extreme and to make him real, you were in the hands of the people around you.
Did you have any embarrassing moments during the shoot?
It's so funny, when you have a background in combat sports, people think you're this martial arts expert, but really I'm just a guy who is able to do certain things without making a mess of himself. There was the scene in the clinic when Pierce and I were both running and I was barefoot, and they didn't tell us when they were going to put the water on and I was going at full speed and all of a sudden the water turns on and I whacked into the camera and just did a flip in mid-air, so that was pretty embarrassing. I think that dispelled some of the expectation.
How did it feel to have your own car with gadgets?
When I was a kid that was all it was about, the gadgets. That's when it really came together for me that I was in a Bond film, to have my own spy car and being on the glaciers of Iceland going, "What's this button for?" And a machine gun comes up, and rockets. Everything was surreal at that point, but this one just took the cake. I did wish at times that it was a hard top, because being in the ice castle there was so much debris and gunk falling on me, I could hardly see in front of me. I'm still working on getting one myself.
