When I walked onto the set of War, Jet Li was slouching on a chair, a position we never see on screen. But once action was called, he sprang to life, chasing his nemesis with a sword in the rubble of an exploded car dealership. On a break, we got to speak with the more calm incarnation of Jet Li, who plays a Chinese assassin in the US in his upcoming film.

War Isn’t a Martial Arts Movie: “Our movie, this character, I never played this kind of character before because myself, I don’t know whether he’s good or bad.

That really depends later when you see the movie. When the audience sees the movie, they decide. I only know this character is very violent and has a reason. Something [he] always keeps in his heart, his belief. The other movies I play, a lot of characters are very clearly good guys or a cop or the master in Chinese films. Very straightforward from the top to the end.

This one, he’s violent and there’s a big difference between a martial arts movie and this kind of movie. A martial arts movie, like recently I made Fearless, it doesn’t just have martial arts. It also has philosophy. How to use martial arts just for violence to kill people, or you can use martial arts to stop something, to help people. How you use it, just like a weapon. A weapon is not good and not bad. It really depends on the person using it. So martial arts has a lot of culture behind physical moves. This, I don’t think is a martial arts movie. It is an action movie. It’s not a typical Chinese [movie] we call Kung Fu or a martial arts movie.”

The Challenge of Getting Into a Violent Character: “It’s quite difficult. Before, it was easy. Before, you’re an actor, you just do the job. You’re acting sometimes as a father, I play a father but at the time maybe I wasn’t a father yet. I played a lot of different characters. Even Lethal Weapon 4, I played the bad guy. I didn’t think it was so far [out]. It’s just the past maybe eight years, I became a Buddhist, I always say violence is not the only solution. I made a few movies, one is Hero, one is Danny the Dog, one is Fearless. I think [those] three movies continue to talk about my personal belief that violence is not the only solution. I try, through the film, to talk about my personal belief. When I suddenly go back to this very violent character, I’m struggling. So you need to be very clear you’re just an actor. Even though I don’t agree with what this guy is doing, I need to do it best. When I go to the set, I forget I’m Jet Li first. I’m [part of] this world. Then I go back, even when I go home, I think, ‘Oh, why am I doing this?’ So I need to know it’s not me, it’s somebody else.”

Accidents Happen During Filming – It’s a Fact of Life: “If somebody tells you making an action movie doesn’t hurt the other, I think he’s lying. …You’re never going to punch the other or something, for sure. For sure. But for an action actor, usually when we say ‘got injured’ that means you go to the hospital. Production stopped. Really. Then we say, ‘Oh, somebody got injured because the movie cannot [go on]. Shooting stopped.’ If they just [accidentally hit], you cut, your black and blue, you cut your nose, just go backstage, put a bandage on and continue to work. That’s just normal. That’s not ‘injured’.”

Jet Li on the Direction His Career’s Taking: Is he stepping back from martial arts movies? “No, I didn’t say that,” answered Li. “I said Fearless is my last martial arts movie because I put my heart into that character. All my belief. The physical part, the mental part, everything in that movie. I’ve been learning martial arts since I was eight years old and the character I played is a great martial artist. And also he died at 42 years. The same age when I made that movie, so I put a lot of my life experiences in that film. I said that’s the last martial arts film, because martial arts in my mind is totally different. The Chinese character, how they write about martial arts is to stop war. Stop the war or stop the fighting. The two words, put them together is martial art, like that kind of idea. The real meaning is that, so a few thousand years ago, they started martial arts meaning to stop war. But later on we take out the art, we only fight, fight, fight. Show the violence only. So I told it very clearly in that film. But this kind of film, an action film, I will continue playing [these characters and] making action films. Action - just action. You can find a lot of physical contact, fights, street fight. In my own heart it’s not about art. It’s a different type of movie.”