ACF 887: Happy Birthday, Kelly Hu!

A talented and gorgeous actress, Kelly Hu was born February 13, 1968 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Of Chinese, Hawaiian, and English ancestry, she is a fourth generation American. The first Asian-American to be crowned Miss Teen USA (1985), she was also named Miss Hawaii in 1993. After a modeling stint in Japan and Italy, she moved to Hollywood and got her first big break in 1987 in the TV show Growing Pains.

She has since appeared in scads of television shows. I think I first became aware of her when she co-starred in Marshall Law (1998-200) with Sammo Hung. Most recently she had two stints on the hit CBS reboot of Hawaii Five-0, where she portrayed Laura Hills, an aide to the governor. (Here's hoping she'll be back in more episodes and hopefully have more to do, preferably helping the Five-0 team kick some bad-guy-butt.)

And of course, she's been in numerous films, including:

The Doors (1991)
The Scorpion King (2002)
Cradle 2 the Grave (2003)
X2 (2003, a.k.a. X-Men 2: X-Men United)

Her work in action films benefited from her being a black belt in karate. She is also a very fine comedienne, as demonstrated in the unfortunately short-lived TV series In Case of Emergency (2007). Her next movie is Almost Perfect, which filmed (at least in part) in New York, and which has not yet been released.

So, best wishes for a wonderful birthday, Kelly, from Dr. G, one of your biggest fans.

ACf 832: R.I.P. Hideko Takamine

Hideko Takamine
March 27, 1924 - December 28, 2010

Venerable Japanese actress Hideko Takamine, who starred in classic films such as Keisuke Kinoshita's Twenty-four Eyes and Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, has died at the age of 86. Her death, from lung cancer on December 28th, was announced on New Year's Eve.

Read more about her at Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow by clicking here.

ACF 815: Stage & Screen Actress TV Carpio

Still of TV from Across the Universe

TV Carpio currently boasts a significant role in the upcoming musical Spider-Man on Broadway. This will mark the second time she has worked with Julie Taymor, following their successful collaboration in the acclaimed feature film Across the Universe (TV starred as Prudence who sang in the very memorable rendition of "I Want To Hold Your Hand").

Teresa Victoria Carpio, better known as TV, was born in Oklahoma City, but moved to and grew up in New York and in Hong Kong with her mother, Teresa Carpio, who is a household name as a singer and entertainer in Asia. By junior high, TV's family had moved back to the States where her promising ice-skating career was curtailed by an unfortunate injury. Upon graduation from high school she took time out to become fluent in Spanish before enrolling herself into the jazz program at the New School University in New York City.

TV appeared as a dancer in music videos for Bruce Springsteen and Whitney Houston, among others, which led to small parts on television's "Law and Order" and "The Jury." As an alto soprano she sang with the Hong Kong Philharmonic in her mother's acclaimed Diva concerts, playing and singing the part of her mother as an 18 years old.

From there she landed the role of Gail in Spike Lee's She Hate Me, followed by the role of Angela in Lee's Sucker Free City for Showtime.

Deciding to focus on acting, she moved to Los Angeles, and within a few months she was cast as Prudence in Julie Taymor's Across The Universe. She then moved back to New York and was cast as Alexi Darling in Rent on Broadway.

Recently she landed the role of Valerie in the upcoming Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper film Limitless (formerly The Dark Fields), directed by Neil Burger and to be released in March 2011 by Relativity in which TV and Cooper share some particularly intimate on-screen moments.

Lucky Bradley.

And lucky us for having such a lovely, talented and versatile performer to enrich the many diverse entertainments she has, is, and no doubt will continue to do.