Winter 2012-13 Cover Story | Maggie Q

Now in her third season playing the title role in The CW hit series, Nikita, Maggie Q knows what she wants — from the best angle to showcase a gown to how an action scene should be done in Hollywood.

by Ada Tseng

At the start of our interview, Maggie Q jokes that she might be in a concussed state.

“I was just fighting this guy, and I smashed my head into the camera,” she says, still stunned. “I paused for a second, I had tears coming out of my eyes, and then I was like, ‘OK, I’m ready. Let’s go.’”

For most people, this sounds like a horrific assault, but it’s just another day at work for the 33-year-old actress and action star. In the past two seasons of her CW television show Nikita, Maggie has fallen down a ladder, broken fingers, and even burned her breasts. The latter happened while filming a scene where she was running down a hill, shooting a gun. She was sprinting so quickly that the hot, empty shells fell straight into her bra.

Before Nikita, before Hollywood was courting her for blockbuster roles in Mission: Impossible III andLive Free or Die Hard, Maggie paid her dues acting in Hong Kong martial arts films like Gen-Y Copsand Naked Weapon — productions where safety codes were more lax, to say the least. Therefore, getting her potential head injury evaluated seems far from her mind. She’s on a strict half-hour break from shooting the show, now in its third season, and in exactly 27 minutes, she will go back for more.

When the creators of Nikita approached Maggie to star in their television re-boot of the 1990 French film of the same name, the Vietnamese-Irish-Polish American told them she wouldn’t do it unless it was good. This was her first time doing television, after years of acting in feature films, alongside action legends including Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Sammo Hung.

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