Ric Young

The White Suit Assassin

In 1984, Ric Young tried to kill Indiana Jones. He wore an impeccable suit and carried a machine gun while chasing the archaeologist through the streets of Shanghai. That role as Kao Kan in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom pulled him out of obscurity on British sets and launched him onto the global market.

But his story didn't begin with an adventure movie chase. Ric Young was born in London under the name Wing-Wah Yung and trained at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in the early 1960s.

His academic rigor did little to help him against the prejudices of the time.

Throughout that decade and the next, he racked up appearances in series such as The Avengers or The Saint. These were brief roles where his background shaped the script more than his talent. So he decided to cross the pond in search of celebrities' roles with more weight in the American industry.

The look that won over Bertolucci

In 1987, the project arrived that changed how top casting directors saw him. Bernardo Bertolucci chose him to play the interrogator in The Last Emperor. It was a cold, restrained performance that contrasted with the scenery-chewing of his earlier action films.

That opened the doors of major Los Angeles studios for him. Oliver Stone called him in 1995 to play Mao Zedong in the film Nixon. It was no easy challenge, because he had to humanize a political myth without falling into visual parody.

He made the audience forget the makeup.

Young soon understood that in Hollywood, an actor with Asian features had to work twice as hard to avoid being mere set dressing. In 1997, he took part in Seven Years in Tibet, and shortly after he joined big-budget productions such as The Transporter in 2002.

The Face of the Silent Villain

Between 2001 and 2004, he became a recurring nightmare for Jennifer Garner in the series AKA. His character, Dr. Zhang Lee, was an expert in torture who always showed up at the most tense moments of the plot. Television gave him the financial stability that film sometimes denied him between big shoots.

In 2007, he worked under Ridley Scott in American Gangster, playing the Chinese general who controlled the drug supply. Despite the passing decades, Young maintained strict physical discipline that allowed him to stay active well into his seventies.

His screen time was only a few minutes.

In 2023, he appeared in the fourth season of the series Succession, playing a luxury tailor for the Roy family. Filming his scenes for the HBO production took place in New York under an absolute confidentiality agreement that prohibited leaking any details of the final storyline.

His career profile lists more than one hundred official credits in the film industry's databases.