Seductive Assassin

Maggie Q as Nikita. © 2011 The CW network, LLC. All rights reserved.

Maggie Q started out modeling, until Jackie Chan made her an action star. Now she’s right on target as the assassin Nikita.

By Linda Marx. Photo by Randee St. Nicholas.

She used her sexy hand-to-hand combat and martial arts skills in 2006 Mission: Impossible II with Tom Cruise. The following year, she repeated it in Live Free or Die Hard with Bruce Willis. Soon after, her lighter, comedic side came out playing opposite George Lopez in the action comedy Balls of Fury. And in the recent 3D Horror Western, Priest, set in a world ravaged by war between man and vampires, she starred as a priestess with Paul Bettany working to find a murderous band of vampires. But award-winning Maggie Q (Margaret Denise Quigley), now starring as a tough Division agent in The CW TV’s popular action-thriller Nikita, had no interest in acting while growing up in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The beautiful daughter of an Irish-Polish government worker father and Vietnamese golf course employee cum property investor mother, remembers running, swimming and participating in a variety of track and field events. “I was an athlete,” says Quigley, 32, the youngest of five children. “My parents got me into sports when I was five or six years old. I did competitions and won events. That was my life — I never thought about acting.” She attended Mililani High School where she was on the cross-country, track and field and swim teams. In 1997, the year she graduated, Quigley won the title of “Best Bod.”
At age 17, with her exotic good looks and well-toned physique, a friend suggested that she try to model even though her dream was to be a veterinarian so she could indulge her lifelong passion for animals. A year later, after unsuccessful stints at modeling in Tokyo and Taipei, she moved to Hong Kong. “I had twenty bucks in my pocket,” she has told reporters. “I mean, I literally did the same thing that my mother did when she left Vietnam—didn’t speak the language, had no money.”

But that wasn’t the case in Hong Kong, where she eventually changed her name to Maggie Q. As a model, she found lots of work there, shot more than 200 magazine covers around the world (InStyle, Elle, Marie Claire, Madame Figaro, etc.) and met superstar Jackie Chan, who saw a potential action star and trained her to do her own stunts and always be professional. “I had never done a day of martial arts in my life when I started in the business,” she has said. “I couldn’t even touch my toes.”

Photo by Randee St. Nicholas

But the agile and graceful model and athlete was a natural. So she learned quickly. In 2000, her accidental acting career began in Hong Kong when she was cast for the TV drama House of the Dragon, which became a big hit. That success led her to a lead role in the film, Gen-Y Cops, where she played an FBI agent with Paul Rudd. She also played twins in Manhattan Midnight. Chan was so impressed with her abilities that he cast her in the mega-hit Rush Hour 2 with Chris Tucker, and Around the World in 80 Days, a worldwide action chase and adventure.

In 2002, she starred as a martial arts assassin femme fatale in the action film Naked Weapon, a cross between Charlie’s Angels and The Matrix because of its difficult stunts and CGI-enhanced special effects. The same year, she co-produced the animal treatment documentary Earthlings, narrated by Joaquin Phoenix. The film illustrated the day-to-day practices of some of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely on animals for profit.

As an animal activist, Maggie still lends her voice to Animals Asia Foundation in Hong Kong, and works with Best Friends Animal Society. Her PSA to rescue China Moon Bears is airing in Asia, and she is producing another campaign for Best Friends. In 2008, she was named Person of the Year for PETA Asia Pacific. “I love animals and continue to work toward showing people that they are not treated properly,” says Quigley, who now lives in Los Angeles with several rescue dogs. “They are defenseless. And we need to do all we can to help them.”