Seductive Assassin

Quigley, who speaks English, Vietnamese, Cantonese and Japanese, was responsible for the removal of all fur from the wardrobe on the 2008 set of Chinese feature Three Kingdoms: Ressurection of the Dragon, where she played opposite Andy Lau for director Daniel Lee. That same year, she acted with Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor in the cat and mouse thriller Deception, playing an investment banker who introduced Jackman to an exclusive sex club. In fact, during the past few years before landing Nikita, she has enjoyed a nonstop show business career. The talented woman appeared in three segments of the feature film, New York, I Love You, a collaboration of good old-fashioned storytelling from creative filmmakers such as Brett Ratner, Mira Nair and Allen Hughes. The segments also featured A-listers like Natalie Portman, Shia LaBeouf and Bradley Cooper.
Quigley won The Maverick Award at the 2009 Hawaiian International Film Festival for her work in the Chinese epic film Warrior and the Wolf, directed by Zhuangzhuang Tian. And she starred in the recent action comedy Rogue’s Gallery, plus Operation: Endgame and King of Fighters, based on the video game.

For her plum title role, Nikita, in the CW’s continuing series, Quigley has a great time, in part, she says, because the story is so good. Nikita began as a 1990 French feature film by Luc Besson; later, it became a 1993 remake called Point of No Return, followed by 1997’s La Femme Nikita. The series focuses on Quigley’s role as a woman who escaped from a secret government-funded organization called Division, which has the distinction of hiring troubled teens and teaching them to become assassins. After a three-year hiding period, Nikita comes back armed with schemes to bring down the Division. Seductive and saucy, Quigley’s character is a stunner to watch.

“It’s a dark fairytale,” says Craig Silverstein, executive producer, when describing the CW’s version of Nikita. “Nikita is taken from one life, her identity is erased, she’s put in another life and  transformed. It’s like Alice in Wonderland. She’s told, ‘eat this, drink that, steal this, kill that.’  And she begins to find her own identity through that. It is just a great story.”
As a trained assassin gone rogue after her fiancé is killed by the Division, Nikita, who does her own stunts and is reportedly deaf in one ear because her eardrum was blown out in an explosive stunt, makes it her mission to utterly collapse the organization.

On the outside, she trains a woman named Alex, who quickly becomes an inside recruit, working as a mole for Nikita. However, having trained Nikita, Michael, a Division operative who is actually dating her, is ordered by his boss, the Division’s honcho Percy, to “deal” with his former student. In the meantime, Division continues training its recruits and performing operations, unaware of Nikita’s mole. “People don’t know much about Nikita,” Quigley told aTV interviewer in October. “And while she is normally a very decisive person, she encounters a lot of tension and indecision while discovering being away from the team is not easy.”

When not working on this very complex and action intensive show, Quigley continues her humanitarian causes and works as a spokesperson for a variety of companies at different times: LUX Personal Wash products, SOFINA Facial Skin-care (China), Dermalogica (Hong Kong), Coca-Cola (Japan), Haojue Suzuki Motorcycle (China), Lancel Image Girl (Asia), Max Factor (China) and Shiseido UV White (Japan).
With her Eurasian good looks, stylish dress, cinematic skills and popular series ongoing, the future looks bright for this hardworking star. But she knows it requires blood, sweat and tears. “When you come to America, it’s a very serious thing,” she has said. “It’s not like you arrive and they say, ‘Come on! Do movies!’ I can’t just be hopping around. I have to focus and be still and make sure I put the time and effort in. Because if I don’t, I could lose it like that.”