Al Leong
Al Leong is an actor, born 1952.
For most of the 1980s and 1990s, Albert Leong was the most reliably employed henchman in American action cinema. Born in St. Louis in 1952, he was a martial artist and a stuntman before he was a face, and the face is what did it: wiry frame, long black hair, a Fu Manchu moustache. He was often billed as some version of "Asian Bad Guy", which tells you exactly how the industry saw him and how little that limited what he actually did with the parts.
His gift was making four minutes of screen time stick. In Lethal Weapon (1987) he is Endo, the torturer running electric current through Mel Gibson's character, playing the work as calm technical routine. In Die Hard (1988) he is Uli, the terrorist who pauses a hostage siege to help himself to a chocolate bar, a piece of business that has outlived most of that film's dialogue. He is a hatchet man in Big Trouble in Little China (1986) and a slightly undersized Genghis Khan in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), and in each case he is the henchman you can pick out of the line-up afterwards.
The rest of the run reads as a map of the era: Year of the Dragon (1985), Action Jackson (1988), Death Warrant (1990) opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme, Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991) uncredited, Rapid Fire (1992) opposite Brandon Lee, Double Dragon (1994), The Shadow (1994), Escape from L.A. (1996), an uncredited gunman in The Replacement Killers (1998), a training master in The Scorpion King (2002). He also wrote and directed one low-budget feature of his own in 2000. He is now retired.
Movies (27)
- Die Hard (1988)
- Lethal Weapon (1987)
- Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
- The Scorpion King (2002)
- Escape from L.A. (1996)
- Hard Hunted (1992)
- The Shadow (1994)
- The Perfect Weapon (1991)
- Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
- Dark Angel (1990)
- The Replacement Killers (1998)
- Savage Beach (1989)
- Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991)
- Joshua Tree (1993)
- Death Warrant (1990)
- Fit to Kill (1993)
- Rapid Fire (1992)
- Double Dragon (1994)
- Action Jackson (1988)
- She's Having a Baby (1988)
- My Science Project (1985)
- Year of the Dragon (1985)
- Forbidden Warrior (2004)
- The Ghost (2001)
- Confessions of an Action Star (2005)
- Martial Outlaw (1993)
- In Search of the Last Action Heroes (2019)
TV (1)
Where to start with Al Leong
Begin at Die Hard, because the chocolate bar is the single best argument for what a background actor can do with a couple of lines and a director who leaves the camera running. Then take Lethal Weapon straight after it, where he plays cruelty as an ordinary shift at work, which is far more disturbing than snarling would have been.
Big Trouble in Little China is the one to watch for the physical work, since John Carpenter actually gives the martial artists room to move. For the comedy end of him, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is a two-scene joke he plays entirely straight, and it lands because of that.
After those four you are choosing your own decade. Death Warrant and Rapid Fire are the star-vehicle henchman years, Escape from L.A. is late-period Carpenter with him back in the crowd, and the deep cuts are mostly worth it for spotting him rather than for the films.