Olivia Cheng (Canadian actress)
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Olivia Sonya Cheng is a Canadian actress, broadcast journalist, and former correspondent for Entertainment Tonight Canada.[1]
Olivia Cheng was born in Edmonton, Alberta to Cantonese-speaking immigrant parents, who were part of a co-founding group of Chinese parents that created the Edmonton Mandarin Bilingual program within the city’s public school system. She is the co-founder of One Asian, a group that supports the education and empowerment of women of Asian heritage.
Olivia enrolled in her first acting class at age six, and at age 19 she booked her first commercial. After high school, Olivia attended the University of Alberta where she earned a scholarship and early admittance to its commerce program. Unhappy in university, she enrolled at NAIT’s Radio and Television Arts program the following year, which would lead her to a successful media career. After finishing school, she became a videographer for Global TV Lethbridge, before moving back to Edmonton to work as a broadcast and print journalist. Olivia went on to freelance as a correspondent for ET Canada, but soon realized that she wanted to be on the other side of the interview. At this time, AMC was launching its original content division and came to Alberta with a Walter Hill-helmed mini-series executive produced by Robert Duvall. They were looking for five Chinese actresses, but were willing to look at non-professionals as well. Duvall saw Cheng’s audition out of over 100 performances and asked to bring her back. She was then cast in Broken Trail, which was nominated for 16 Primetime Emmy Awards and would go on to win four, including the Emmy for Outstanding Mini Series. Since then, Olivia has appeared on Supernatural and Eureka, and the episode "The New World" on the television show The 4400.[2] Cheng appears as Linda Park in the TV series Arrow. In 2007, Cheng played Iris Chang in Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking based on Chang's best-selling 1997 book The Rape of Nanking and produced by Chang's parents.[3] Chang was the American historian who did much to raise awareness in the West of the Rape of Nanking where Japanese forces went on a rampage of murder, rape, torture, looting and burning after taking Nanking in December 1937.[4] Chang's book also brought to attention the story of John Rabe, the German businessman who saved thousands of lives during the Rape of Nanking; Rabe is known as the "Angel of Nanking" and "Good Man of Nanking". Before Chang's book, Rabe's story was unknown in the West. After battling severe depression for a number of years, Chang committed suicide in 2004. In a 2007 interview, Cheng stated that as someone had also suffered from depression, she felt a strong affinity for Chang and remarked: "I was born to play Iris Chang".[5]
In 2014, Cheng booked a role in Netflix’s new series Marco Polo. Produced by The Weinstein Company, Marco Polo is a lavish television drama, one of the most expensive ever produced, about Marco Polo’s journey as he travels from his home in Venice to the court of Kublai Khan, where he finds himself in the middle of a war in 13th-century China.[6] Cheng portrays Lin Mei, a concubine and assassin, the sister of Jia Sidao. Cheng joked in an interview in December 2014 that owing to her frequent nude scenes in Macro Polo that she would not be watching the series with her parents, saying: "That would be so uncomfortable. I think if I did, the only benefit would be that I would fast-forward through my scenes and just give them the Cliffs Notes… I would just be like, ‘Here’s what happens. Next scene".[7] Cheng added that she wanted the role of Lin Mei with the requirement for many nude scenes because: "I’m stepping into things that really go against a lot of cultural rules, cultural boundaries. Honestly, I feel like the fact that I was born Canadian has given me that liberty to be able to make some choices that push some boundaries."[8]
References
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- ↑ http://www.torontosun.com/2014/08/28/first-look-at-netflixs-marco-polo-series
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