"I looked at [my supervisor], and he was 37, he had a belly,
dandruff and was out of shape. I asked myself, 'Will I look like that when I'm 37?'"
So inspired, in fact, that in 1981, just before starting his senior year, he
sold his car and used the money to spend a quarter studying wu shu in China.
He didn't dare tell his parents. His mother found out anyway. "An aunt
wrote [my mother] and said, 'I saw Robin in Nanjing.'
"I take a lot of chances," Shou says. "I follow whatever impulse comes.
I'm a fanatical guy."
Shou returned to Cal State L.A. to get his B.S. in civil engineering. The
year and a half he spent working at an engineering firm convinced him that
he needed a different career.
"I found computer and electronics too boring," he says. "Finishing
school, getting a job and getting married--I couldn't take that. My job was
boring. I wasn't happy. The only thing that kept me going was martial
arts."
One day his supervisor asked Shou to join him in starting a company to
develop properties in Monterey Park to profit from the big influx of Chinese
moving into the area. Shou was 25 at the time. "I looked at [my supervisor],
and he was 37, he had a belly, dandruff and was out of shape. I asked
myself, 'Will I look like that when I'm 37?'" Shou resolved to leave
engineering and find a career that would excite him. He traveled to Hong
Kong, "not doing anything, just to take a long vacation and think." There he
was offered the chance to appear in a movie as a stuntman. The pay was
$200 for a 9-hour day. Not bad for 1986.
"We were in a 14-story high elevator shaft," Shou recalls. "My first day
the choreographer asked me if I could jump from the top of the number 1
shaft to the top of the number 3 shaft. Number 2 was down on the ground
floor." Miss the beam, and he would fall 14 stories to a messy death. "I said
that don't seem that hard. When the action came, I jumped, dangled for a
few seconds, then [steadied myself]. That choreographer is now a good
friend. I asked him 'How could you let me do that?' He said, 'Well, you
seemed pretty confident.' He also asked if I could roll down 10 flights of
stairs."
That first job lasted 20 days. When shooting finished, the producer
asked Shou to play a bodyguard in another action film. The same pay, less
danger. His first two years in Hong Kong Shou played bit parts in five action
films. He lived alone in a little Kowloon rooftop apartment that cost $250 a
month, cheap even by Hong Kong standards. He had a girlfriend. Life was
good, especially compared to the alternative back in the States. Hard times
came, however, when Shou got tired of playing bodyguards and began
holding out for something better.
"I started to be a little picky," Shou recalls of that period. "I was turning
down a lot of stuntman/bodyguard roles." Occasionally he landed a speaking
part, but he often went six months between jobs.
His first real dramatic role was in Forbidden Love, a Warner
Brothers made-for-TV movie filmed in 1989. Shou played a Chinese student
who becomes the lover of an American teacher played by Melissa Gilbert of
Little House on the Prairie.
"Everything [about that role] was a coincidence," Shou recalls. The
producer and casting director were in Hong Kong to scout locations. Not
having been able to cast a male lead in the States, they put out a casting call
while in Hong Kong. "I went in and they said, 'Start reading.' After two lines
they said, 'Wait a minute, Robin, stop. Come back tomorrow. We want to put
you on tape.' They put me on tape. They went back to the States and called.
'We're having trouble with the network. They want to do the casting. We
have to fly you over here to meet with Melissa to see who has better
chemistry."
The chemistry between Shou and Gilbert proved excellent. "At the end
of the scene," Shou recalls, "one comment she made was that when I said I
loved her, I nodded instead of shaking my head. She told me, 'Robin, I feel
very comfortable with you.'"
It was as meaty a role as any young actor could wish for, and Shou's
performance was credible, especially for an actor whose previous acting jobs
had been limited to thuggery.
Forbidden Love wrapped that December. Rather than trying to use
that as a springboard for landing other Hollywood roles, Shou returned to
resume his career in Hong Kong action films.
"There weren't that many roles here at that time," Shou says. "By that
time I was getting big supporting roles and leads [in Hong Kong movies] like
Black Cat Part 2, Tiger Part 2, Burning Arsenal. They were
medium hits, not really big hits."
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