The Hollywood actor reflects on discipline, diverse casting, and what it means to finally feel human

Barely a minute into my interview with Ludi Lin, 38, at Fraser’s House A Luxury Collection in Singapore, my voice memo refused to work and I was getting flustered. Ludi, sensing my frustration, asked if he could help and I willingly passed him my phone, before he gasped, “You have over 60,000 unread emails?” Yes, Ludi, I am one of those. I explained that I lacked the discipline to sit down and get some AI assistant to organise my life, and I divulged a little too much when I said I was into “organised chaos.”But you see, Ludi’s reaction is completely understandable in this situation because the Hollywood actor thrives on routine and discipline. Reprising his role as Liu Kang in the 2026 sequel of Mortal Kombat, Ludi has always been in training mode right up to this film. “Yes, it's a part of my lifestyle. I'm always training for one thing or another – whether it's a run, weight training, or martial arts. I'm always physically moving,” Ludi shared with Buzzfeed Asia.In preparation for Mortal Kombat II, Ludi found that the stunts for the second film were far more challenging than the first: “The fights were more intricate. But also, at the same time, it was more planned. We had more preparation and I was more confident for sure.” To prepare for the fight scenes, Ludi said breaking them down into workable “chunks” makes it doable. For an example he shared that for a type of choreography, “you just go through the moves.” By advancing the first 10 seconds, you’ll get the first five seconds of the work. But when it gets too much, doing the work for the first two seconds will get you there. Good tip!“I really need to clarify that I tried to do most of my own fights as much as possible. But for the stunts, we have a tremendous stunt team, and the professionals step in to do dangerous stunts, like, big wire work, big falls and big hits,” Ludi said. “Our stunt team on Mortal Kombat is truly world-class as they’re unmatched.”Besides working closely with the amazing stunt team who’s worked on major action films and video game motion capture, including Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, John Wick, and the MK1 game, Ludi joined forces with some of Southeast Asia’s talented actors, like Chin Han and Joe Taslim.“It was great to have done two movies with Chin Han and Joe is just the best. I've known Chin Han for a long time now. And yeah, everyone just gets along really well, You start to discover different sides of people – Chin Han is so, like, enigmatic and wise. He's also good by himself. But, when he's in a group, you start to find out how funny he is, especially from his perspective of things. Joe is just a good brother to have in your corner. We would just go to his room to hang out if there's something going on, or after a night out, or, if people are tired after work, we’d just gather in his room, eat, listen to music and watch movies. They are just the most easy going guys – completely opposite to the intense characters that they portray,” Ludi shared.

The actor also had the pleasure of working closely together with New Zealand actor Karl Urban, who joined the franchise as the iconic and fan-favourite character Johnny Cage. “His character, Johnny Cage is one of the top fan favourites, so to have him join the world and have a very unique spin on the character is awesome. And Karl just nails Johnny Cage. There's a lot of debate, you know? Fans will always have their vision of the character, right? But I think what Karl did is just to show that sometimes people don't know what they like until they see it. And he just nails the arrogance, the likeability, the humour of Johnny Cage so well. He's an absolute pleasure to work with and it's a pleasure watching him work,” Ludi added.Could you imagine the WhatsApp group chat? I poked a bit to find out what they’ve been saying, and Ludi said the memories were something he pondered over: “When I look back on some of the memories while we're filming – they're hilarious, just like the pictures we took and the jokes that we tell each other. The memories are all that and that's the beauty of it. It's like a journal for us.”With sequels making a big wave in 2026 (we’ve got The Devil Wears Prada 2, Avatar 3, Toy Story 5 and more), I asked Ludi why Hollywood is obsessed with extending Mortal Kombat’s storyline.“I think it's when something's good, you never want it to end. And usually when you see one movie in a franchise, you're only given a little peek into the window of a much larger world – whether it's MCU or DC. You want to explore it more, see other aspects of the story and fill in those spaces with your imagination. I know when I read a good book, but when I finish it, I just don't want it to end,” he said.

Between the first live-action film reboot to the sequel, a span of five years has come and gone. But for die-hard fans, it’s been a long overdue reckoning for them. Ludi smiled before answering: “Yeah, it took a while to film. I mean, whether or not there's a Mortal Kombat curse, that's a question to be debated. In the first movie, we hit the pandemic when it came out. In the second movie, during filming, we hit the strike. So we took a six month pause, then we came back and finished the movie.”He continued, “And then we're kind of a victim of our own success, because the movie tested really well. They wanted to make the screening of the movie kind of a big IMAX movie. So they had to wait for a proper IMAX spot, and when it was time for release, the hype was so big after the first trailer that they felt like, ‘Okay, we need to make this a summer movie to give it more of a chance to build out the universe and for a third movie, right?’. So, it's just one delay after another, and now it's finally (here), fingers crossed.”Films with a diverse cast team member like Mortal Kombat almost didn’t exist in Hollywood but that’s starting to change. According to Hollywood Diversity Report 2026, new evidence from 2025 further demonstrates that America’s increasingly diverse audiences prefer diverse content in theatrical film releases. So what does that say about being a third culture kid in Hollywood for someone like Ludi who has looked up to idols like Jet Li, Stephen Chow and Jackie Chan?“Oh, that's really important. Not many people are familiar with this term, ‘third culture kid’ and they're starting to. I think as a third culture kid, it just means that you have to be like a melee comedian, and sometimes you have to be okay with adapting to different environments and wearing two different hats. For example, when mingling with your social group at school, and when you step back home, you have to be okay with it. When I was a kid, I could never go home to my mum and tell her like, ‘I'm done with eating fried rice’, or ‘I want my autonomy in this house’, because I'm a full person, you know? That just didn't work in a Chinese household. You’ll also have to be okay with watching some of your white friends, having their freedom and knowing that that's not for you,” he said.

He continued: “Being a third culture kid also gave me a lot of desire to bridge some of the cultures to act as one bridge for the two cultures that I was living in. That would be a lot more simple for me to live in rather than code switching all the time, right? For me, I feel like that would create a lot more peace and harmony in the world if different cultures understood each other a lot more.”So does Ludi’s mum approve of his career choice now? Ludi thinked so: “She is proud of me, and she'll always be worried about me as well. I still strive to tell her every day that everything will be fine. When I'm not working, I'm actually just taking a break because there will be a job. She thinks I'm not working, then I'll never get work. Being an actor, you've already chosen a career that is so unpredictable, right? Each film actually could feel like your last one, because each time you have to prove that you can pass the audition process, and you have to prove that you can do the job every single time.”

Lastly, to end the interview, I asked Ludi what was his proudest personal accomplishment that we should know of: “The latest personal progress? I would say, the ability to to accept sadness and to not turn pain into suffering because I've heard the saying that pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice. Just to be okay that sometimes things don't turn out the way you want to turn out, and that's okay.”Ludi also hoped that we all can turn that pain into hope and love – just to feel more human than ever before. “I don't know about other people, but personally, there's been a lot of walls that I have had to put up since I was a kid, in order to protect myself. And more and more these days, I think the progress is to be able to tear down more and more of those walls and feel more human, feel more emotional – just to put myself at risk, so I could confront my own mistakes and be okay with it. I think that's my personal progress,” he shared.

Mortal Kombat II is now showing in Cinemas near you.