Ming-Na Wen

Ming-Na ("enlightenment") was born on the island of Macau, forty miles from Hong Kong. Her mother, Lin Chan Wen, divorced her father when Ming-Na was only a toddler. She has an older brother named Jonathan. After the divorce, they moved to Hong Kong where her mother became a nurse. There her mother met Soo Lim Yee, a U.S. businessman. They soon married, and at four years, Ming-Na moved with her family to Queens, New York. Five years later, they transferred to Yee's hometown of Pittsburgh where his family runs the Chinatown Inn restaurant. Jonathan and half-brother, Leong, now manage this restaurant. Struggling to fit in at school, she changed her name to Maggie & Doris. She found a love for acting while appearing in a third grade Easter play, where she played a klutzy bunny. Her mother was not excited about her desire to pursue acting, She preferred that she go into medicine. Nonetheless, Ming-Na graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in theatre. She got her first acting job in 1988 on the soap _As the World Turns (1956)_ (qv). Her big break came when she was cast in _The Joy Luck Club (1993)_ (qv). When she needed a ride to the premiere of the film, her acting instructor sent one of his students, 'Eric Michael Zee' (qv). The two started dating in 1994 after Ming-Na moved permanently to Los Angeles and married in 1995, dropping her last name, Wen, at that time. She says she is now like 'Ann-Margret' (qv). Zee is a screenwriter and, with Ming-Na, manages At Last, a boy band.::John Sacksteder, jsack@ka.net>