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WE'RE HANGIN' WITH..... FINAL FANTASY'S DR. AKI ROSS MING-NA WEN Gorgeous Asian actress Ming-Na Wen may be best known as Dr. Deb Chen
on the popular t.v. series "E.R." AGW:: Final Fantasy cyber-star Aki is making her way into magazines alongside Lara Croft. Who do you think is hotter and why? Aki isn't like this physically strong heroine. She's a scientist so it's more in the brains. She has more smarts there. So, I think for the guys who like a smart, feisty woman, she would win out. AGW:: Which character did you feel personally more connected with, Aki or Mulan? Definitely I would have to say Mulan, I felt a great connection because it's a story I grew up with and it has a special place in my heart. She was a woman coming of age, a much younger woman and Aki, she's been around, seen a lot of ups and downs so in the sense of what she was trying to accomplish and do with her life, I was able to relate to her more on a mature level. AGW:: Aki is very spiritual. So is the whole movie. Are you a very spiritual person? Yeah. I've always believed because of my religion, Buddhism, the whole concept that we are connected to the earth and that we can come back and that karmic energy binds us. You can't explain a lot of these feelings but as you get older and experience more…. certain people you have an instant connection with. It's like why? There's a past life or energy that makes you feel you know them. AGW:: Did the message of this film confuse you? Do you totally understand it? I try to make this analogy…what's confusing is "completing the wave (weapon)". It's like when they find an antidote for some kind of virus they inject you with the same thing in order to cancel or cure that particular bug, that's how they cure you, get the antidote. That's how I equate it. The wave comes from the same organic element as the (enemy) and that's what they are trying to find. When (Dr. Sid) says they are trying to find each spirit within organic matter, it's tying in with the whole of Karmic energy and when he finds those particular elements, that ties it all together and creates the antidote. AGW:: Had you ever played the "Final Fantasy" game before you were approached to do the film? No, I played after. I hadn't played it. AGW:: This film is one generation away from being "really"
real. Are you worried that computer-animated characters will one day put
you out of a job? No. I love technology. More power to this technology. If I could have all these virtual reality characters work for me so I could be at ten different places at once and get ten different paychecks at once…. yeah, go for it. The voices will still have to be done. AGW:: Was the process for recording voices the same for this Computer-animated film and Mulan? It's the same. You go in and they lay down the voice first. They videotape you and then the animators take all that information and piece it all together and..magic happens! It's amazing. It still boggles my mind. People used to come up to me and go "I don't know how you do it. How can you remember all those lines and conjure up these emotions and make it seem so real and be these different characters. I look at these animators and I don't know how they do it. How they take a blank piece of paper or computer screen and suddenly invent or draw something and make it come to life. It's awesome. I'm amazed. AGW:: Were you ever in the same room with any of the other actors while recording? No. It was really difficult in the beginning but once I got into her space and knew who she was…I worked on her for three years, it became a lot easier. The relationship between her and Dr. Sid (voice of Donald Sutherland), it was really important to me that it came through. And her past with Gray (her love interest in the film), I wanted you to feel for their characters. Even though it's animated, they're very real. You want to make it real. It's a very hard discipline because you don't have anybody to play off of. But, I love the whole process. AGW:: Aki may be Eurasian but there aren't any Asian characters in this film. Did that bother you? Yeah, I know. I have to be honest. It did bother me a little bit. I saw one technician that was Asian. It's hard to tell, if she's Eurasian. You'll have to ask the animators. AGW:: Do you work with any groups to prevent Asian stereotypes (Kung-Fu fighters and drug dealers)? I'm producing an Asian-American boy band called
"At Last". They're gonna come out with an album at the
end of the year and it is a fantastic group. They write their own music
and play their instruments. I speak a lot at universities. I'll be doing
a lot more of that next year. People say 'I see you were voted one of
the 100 most influential Asians' and I'm like 'oh, yeah?' But I do take
it seriously now. I used to be like "Oh, please don't call me a role
model" but now I have a real purpose with my daughter and all. Oh, sure. Action is great. I'm one of the first people to go and see an action film and I love seeing strong female roles where they are kicking butt and all that stuff. One of the characters I played in Streetfighter was like that. But, I tell you, it was hard work being in that. Being strapped to those harnesses and rolling in dirt and stuff and jumping off of ledges. It was kind of nice to just go to a sound booth and let them do a lot of the work. AGW:: What advice would you give to teens and pre-teen girls who want to be actors? I think it's really important to know in your heart that you love acting and you love the art of it. That's key because if you're just trying to go after the fame or the money and you think it's an easy job, forget about it. The most successful people you see out there whether it's a Britney Spears or whether it's Kirsten Dunst or Haley Joel Osment, any of those successful people out there work very, very hard and that's key and good training. Get a lot of training. AGW:: What is your dream role and what directors would you like to work with? My dream role…I think any part that Katherine Hepburn has ever been in, whether it's Philadelphia Story or …anything. I just love her so much and I think as for directors, Ang Lee and I would love to work with Ridley Scott, Woody Allen. I would love to work on something where I speak Chinese, my first language. I would have to probably study very hard to really do it well but it would be really interesting to act in my own language for an entire film. We spoke briefly about science fiction. Turns out Ming-na is a huge science fiction fan of both literature and films…."I grew up with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Bradbury, Asimov, "Dune", Robert Heinlein. I was President of my Science Fiction Club in high school. Now it's cool to say it. I never thought in my career I'd be proud to say this but now I am!"
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but this summer, she's the voice of another "doc", Dr. Aki Ross,
the "hyper-real", computer-animated star of the state-of-the-art
CGI film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Ming-Na won the first
Annie award for best lead vocal performance in an animated film for voicing
Mulan. When our AGW reporter met with her recently in L.A., we
learned that she's much more than a voice. With her incredible porcelain
skin and black hair, jeans and a gauzy, violet delicately-beaded top,
she looked like an exquisite china doll but this bright, feisty lady is
nobody's toy. 
