Mei Melancon was joking, of course, as she talked about her appearance as the mutant assassin Psylocke in the megahit X-Men 3: The Last Stand, directed by Brett Ratner, the same guy who directed her in the Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker starrer Rush Hour 2.
"I shot for several days, but in the final cut, my scene was limited to 18 seconds."
Don’t take Mei’s word for it. But when you do watch X-Men 3, which continues to draw record crowds in theaters in the US and in the Philippines, refrain from going to the restroom or, as Mei jokingly warned, you might not see her at all. Blink but do it fast.
"But it’s an honor for me to be in the same movie with superstars like Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry (the X-Men fighting against Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants)," smiled Mei who looked Japanese...no, Chinese...no, French...no, Filipino, very pretty even if her face was un-madeup last Sunday night at the Cebu harbor when Funfare talked to her at the yacht owned by German-born Michael Gleissner who produces and directs Mei’s latest movie, Irreversi, under his own Bigfoot Entertainment.
In fact, Mei is part-Japanese, part-Chinese, part-French and part-Filipino. Her bio-data describes her as "Manila-born" and, confirmed Mei, it’s true, "I was born in Metro Manila, at the Philippine General Hospital, in 1980. But I left the Philippines when I was only two years old."
She said that her mother was a singer at a nightclub in Manila, who used the name Elizabeth Rose, and she’s the voice behind the song How Long You’ve Been Waiting (familiar, isn’t it?). Beyond those basic information about her life, Mei begged off from saying anything more, not especially about her father, not even if you egg her on or, dare, bribe her with a million bucks. No way, she said, refusing to tell even just the surname of her father whom she said she last saw 24 years ago.
"I hardly have any memory of him," said Mei. "What can you expect? I was only two years old then."
But she did give "clues" to her "mystery" father’s identity: He’s a rich man who lives in "a place called Forbes Park," he has Chinese-Japanese blood and is a very rich man. Bulletin’s Walden Belen and Manila Standard’s Isah Red, who were on that Cebu trip with me, short of twisted Mei’s arms to force her into "confessing," making a roll call of Philippine taipans, but Mei was steadfast in her resolve not to "expose" her father, not even when Isah asked Mei for her mom’s phone number in Los Angeles and asked her to dial it on his cellphone.
Could her father be a Sy or a Yu or a Lim or a Go or a Tan or some other prominent Chinese surname? Sorry, folks, none of the above.
That’s why I opted to make today’s Funfare’s headline sound as if Mei is looking for her "missing" father because, honestly now, Mei would welcome any information or a "lead" to her father’s whereabouts.
Meanwhile, back to Mei’s foray into Hollywood which started with a runway show back in 2001. Then, she passed an audition in L.A. for Rush Hour 2 in which she co-starred with, aside from Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, a promising Chinese actress named Zhang Ziyi (now better known as Ziyi Zhang) who zoomed to stardom after she appeared in Ang Lee’s landmark martial-arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
"Remember that scene where Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker drove up in a car? There were two girls with them and one of them was me," said Mei. "Zhang Ziyi? Oh, she was very nice. She’s super-sweet. At that time, Crouching Tiger was not shown yet and she didn’t speak much English. We hung out a lot."
After Rush Hour 2, Mei said she auditioned for more roles and continued her acting lessons under Stella Adler.
Between auditioning and studying, Mei managed to make a guest appearance in the TV series CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) Las Vegas and in HBO’s Deadwood. And then came X-Men 3 which gave her another chance to work with director Brett Ratner.
"Hundreds auditioned," she recalled. "When my turn came, I was asked to do some martial-arts routine and read some lines. Before I knew it, I was in."
Doing Bigfoot Entertainment’s Irreversi has brought Mei back to her birthplace.
According to Michael Gleissner, who’s making his directorial debut in Irreversi, the film is a powerful drama about an overnight millionaire who plots the perfect murder of his beautiful wife. Playing the lead, Mei co-stars with Ian Bohen (Marigold, Cold Case, JAG), Kenny Doughty (Elizabeth, Titus, Crush, The Aryan Couple) and Estella Warren (Kangaroo Jack, Driven, Planet of the Apes).
"We filmed both in English and in Mandarin," said Gleissner whose Bigfoot Entertainment also funded the films 3 Needles (with Lucy Liu), East Broadway (Margaret Cho), Shanghai Kiss (Kelly Hu) and The Curiosity of Chance (Tad Hilgenbrinck). "We want to make a film that genuinely respects its markets, instead of just have it subtitled vice-versa or dubbed."
Irreversi is now in the post-production stage (at the International Academy of Film and Television in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu; Bigfoot Entertainment is the parent company of IAFT... More it in a future issue).
"I just flew in from Cannes last week," said Mei. "I was there for the screening of X-Men 3: The Last Stand.
Did she always want to be an actress?
"What I wanted to be was a singer," said Mei, "like my mom. I was very shy as a kid."
She said her mom has a new family and presumed that her "mystery" father has his own, too.
Asked if she still has relatives in the Philippines, Mei said yes, she has but she didn’t have the time and the chance to reunite with them. "I want them to get in touch with me – if they want to," still adamantly refusing to reveal her father’s identity because, she said, "I want to respect his situation." Clue? Her dad speaks Fookien.
Would she accept an offer to do a movie or a TV show in the Philippines?
"That would be nice. Why not?"
Mei is going back to L.A. tomorrow and will be back before end of the year to help promote the movie.
By then, hopefully, she shall have gotten a "lead" on her father’s whereabouts and reunited with him.
To quote the title of her mother’s song, that’s how long Mei has been waiting – all of 24 years!
If and when, that is.