Great Scot April 2019 Great Scot_156_April_2019_Online | Page 74

OSCA
Chris’ whirlwind trip
to Hollywood fame
IT’S A WHIRLWIND TRIP TO
FAME FOR CHRIS PANG (’02).
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Great Scot Number 156 – April 2019
It is quite a career move. One day you are
doing the rounds of the city trying to sell phones
to businesses — and then, almost before you
realise it has happened, you have become a
movie star and a producer and your home is in
Los Angeles. In a life which is almost as colourful
as the movies in which he stars, that’s the
fairytale story being lived out by Chris Pang (‘02).
After leaving school, Chris majored in
multimedia studies at university, but soon
became dissatisfied with his studies. So he
took a year off and began a job as a phone
salesperson. His acting career began when he
walked into a casting agency which was seeking
a performer with a Chinese accent for a voice
over. Fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, Chris
was a natural for dubbing the voice of the actor
playing Jackie Chan’s brother in New Police
Story.
Suddenly enthused with the idea of
becoming an actor, Chris temporarily migrated
to Beijing and Hong Kong to pursue his dreams.
His big break came in 2010 when he booked
one of the lead roles — Lee Takkam — in a
movie adaptation of the young adult dystopian
novel, Tomorrow, When the War Began, starring
opposite Caitlin Stasey, which was a box office
success in Australia. Later he acted in the feature
film Citizen Jia Li.
But acting can certainly have its lean periods,
and despite the success of Tomorrow, for a while
he received little traction. Undaunted, in 2013
he decided to move to Hollywood to further
his acting career, reuniting with his Tomorrow
co-star Caitlin Stasey in I, Frankenstein, which
starred Aaron Eckhart. In 2016, he appeared
in the Weinstein Company’s Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, as well as in
season two of Marco Polo for Netflix.
In 2018 Chris appeared as Colin Khoo in the
Warner Bros film adaptation, Crazy Rich Asians,
directed by Jon M Chu and starring Constance
Wu and Michelle Yeoh. Next he turned his hand
to producing. He produced the independent film
Empty by Design, set in Manila, and also played
a starring role alongside Osric Chau and Filipina
actress, Rhian Ramos. Empty by Design was
Chris’s first feature film as a producer.
In October 2018 it was announced that
he would join the cast of the 2019 reboot of
Charlie’s Angels, directed by Elizabeth Banks.
It has all been a whirlwind trip to fame and
fortune for the 34 year old, who attended Scotch
from 1994 to 2002 and now lives in Los Angeles.