Ke Huy Quan Had 1 Condition For His 2025 R-Rated Action Movie, And It Was Inspired By Hong Kong’s ’80s Genre Legends

Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan reveals his one condition to star in the 2025 comedy action movie Love Hurts. Quan won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of time-traveling husband Waymond Wang in Everything Everywhere All at Once. Love Hurts revolves around a familiar premise about an average nobody turning into an action hero. Quan plays a mild-mannered realtor, Marvin Gable, who’s a hitman hiding in plain sight.

In an exclusive interview with Screen Rant, Quan shared the one big condition to starring in Love Hurts. As a big fan of Hong Kong action movies in the ’80s, the actor found that era to be “really special” and part of the reason was actors like Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Jet Li performing their own stunts. With Love Hurts, one thing he requested was to “do all the fights,” “every punch, every kick” by himself. He further teased that the comedy action movie has “a great action team.” Check out what he said below:

Well, one of the things that we agreed upon when I came on board was I told them I love the action movies that came out of Hong Kong in the ’80s. There was something really special about that era, and also, there’s something really special when you can see it’s the actors doing the fights themselves, and it’s not a stunt double. You could clearly see if it was Jackie Chan, or Sammo Hung or Jet Li, it was all them doing it.

So, I told them, “Listen, if I’m going to do this, I want to do all the fights myself, every punch, every kick, I want to thrown them myself.” They go, “We love that.” I said, “Okay, but I need a lot of training because it’s been a long time since I’ve done this level of physical work.”

We have a great action team led by Can Aydin. And, of course, JoJo and David Leitch, and this is an 87North movie, so this is their expertise. I trained with the guys for three months, just getting myself in shape. And also, I know all the moves. It’s very familiar to me, but also, it’s familiarizing myself with those moves again.

Over the years, they’ve become muscle memory, but there’s a difference between what I imagine in my mind versus whether I can still do it or not, because I’m 53 years old. [Chuckles] Luckily — and it’s something that I’m very proud about — I was able to do everything myself. So, that was really cool.

What This Means For Love Hurts

Ke Huy Quan Is Doing All The Stunts Himself

Quan is following in Tom Cruise’s footsteps by performing the stunts by himself. However, that doesn’t come as a surprise since the Oscar winner worked as a stunt coordinator during the late 1990s, especially for the first movie X-Men. The actor mentioned that this was because, at the time, he wasn’t getting much acting work, so he resorted to positions as a stunt coordinator and assistant director.

Not using a stunt double meant that Quan had to transform himself into a semi-real fighter to pull off the physical demands of the hitman role. It also means that all the fight scenes will be as authentic, with the Love Hurts trailer already showing the intense efforts in performing those stunts. Quan’s comment confirms that he didn’t use a stunt double in the film. He took a similar approach when filming the martial arts fights in Everything Everywhere All At Once, in which he also didn’t use a stunt double for scenes like the fanny pack.

Our Take on Love Hurts

We’re Hooked

With a promising premise that nearly never goes wrong, Love Hurts is going to be pretty fun. The idea of a hitman being hunted by his ex-partner-in-crime, who is looking for revenge due to their fallout, is full of comedic tension and action intrigue. Quan’s casting certainly sparked fans’ interest along with his fellow Oscar-winner, West Side Story star Ariana DeBose, who also stars in the lead role. Now that Quan is quoting the heavy hitters in the ’80s Hong Kong action movies as inspirations for his fight scenes — we need to watch this.

Coming out on Valentine’s Day and from the producers of Nobody and Violent Night, John Wick stunt coordinator Jonathan Eusebio’s directorial debut is full of promise. While the release date is relatively early in the year, Love Hurts is easily one of the most highly-anticipated films in 2025.