Lewis Tan
Lewis Singwah Tan was born on 4th February 1987, in Salford, Lancashire England, and has been making waves in the entertainment industry since the mid-2000s. His best-known roles are playing Lu Xin Lee in “Wu Assassins”, Gaius Chau in “Into the Badlands”, and Cole Young in “Mortal Kombat”, one of his latest noteworthy projects.
Lewis’s mother, Joanne Cassidy, is a retired fashion model, whereas his father, Philip Tan, is a martial artist, stunt coordinator, and actor of Chinese-Singaporean descent, who taught his son martial arts from a young age. Lewis has three younger brothers: Evan, a photographer, Sam, an actor, and an anonymous third sibling.
In the late 1980s, the Tan family moved to Los Angeles when Philip was hired as a fight co-ordinator for “Batman”. Due to the nature of Philip’s job, the family moved around many times during Lewis’s childhood, living in Spain, France and China. In his adolescent years, Lewis began training in theatre, after discovering his passion for acting.
Notable Roles
Lewis has performed his own stunts since the beginning of his career, which often incorporate elements of Ju-Jitsu, Kung Fu, Muay Thai, and Japanese katana swordplay amongst other styles. The actor’s first credited role was guest-starring as Kym Tanaka in a 2006 episode of “CSI: NY”; in the same year, he was cast as an extra in “Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift”.
In 2007, Lewis perfected his stunt double skills on the sets of “Day Break”, “24”, and “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”. 2013 saw the actor do stunt work and have minor roles in “Olympus Has Fallen” and “The Hangover Part III”, as well as play Bruce Wayne/Batman in the short “The Girlfriend”. Due to the frequent gaps in Lewis’s acting portfolio, we can assume that he worked odd jobs between projects to keep the bills paid.
Lewis’s first major role was playing Shatterstar in the 2018 superhero movie “Deadpool 2”, starring Ryan Reynolds. In the Marvel Comics universe, Shatterstar was a mutant superhero raised in an alternate dimension with no knowledge of his origins. After arriving on Earth, the mutant had to get used to human customs, relationship, and culture. Although Shatterstar was initially asexual, he has been portrayed as pansexual since 2007, a decision criticized by his creators, Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefield.
In “Deadpool 2”, Shatterstar successfully passed the interview stage with Deadpool and Weasel and became one of the main members of X-Force. During a rescue mission which was the movie’s main storyline, he jumped from a plane and met his grisly end after falling into the rotating blades of a helicopter due to the high winds affecting his drop.
2018 was clearly Lewis’s lucky year, as he joined the cast of “Into the Badlands” as regular season three character Gaius Chau. The sci-fi martial arts series premiered on AMC in November 2015 and was set in a post-apocalyptic world 500 years in the future, with citizens relying on crossbows and melee weaponry, and avoiding firearms.
Gaius was Juliet Chau’s brother; despite initially being sentenced to death after freeing Juliet’s slaves, Juliet respected their mother’s wishes and let him go. Amongst Gaius’s many abilities were martial arts, swordsmanship, hand-to-hand combat, and assassination. Viewers saw Gaius in a number of life-and-death situations; although he reached the end of season three unscathed, the series finale failed to end his story on a satisfying note, which disappointed viewers.
Also in 2018, Lewis was cast as Lu Xin Lee in the Netflix crime drama series “Wu Assassins”. Lu Xin Lee is the main character’s best friend, and runs a custom garage which is a front for two auto theft rings. The only season of the show premiered in summer 2019, but was later continued with a standalone movie, “Fistful of Vengeance”, which premiered in February 2022.
In August 2019, Lewis was cast as Cole Young in the 2021 “Mortal Kombat” reboot. This wasn’t the first time the actor was involved with the “Mortal Kombat” media franchise, as he’d previously played Kung Jin in “Mortal Kombat X: Generations”, a web series that was never greenlit, but for which promotional material was released and is still available online.
Cole Young was the main protagonist in the reboot. An MMA fighter with a declining reputation, he began learning about his heritage after meeting with Jax Briggs and would soon begin fighting with new allies to protect Earth from Shang Tsung and the Outworld Champions. Despite inaccurate reports of Lewis not returning for “Mortal Kombat 2”, which is set to release in 2024, we can confirm that the actor will be reprising his role as Cole in the long-awaited sequel.
In April 2021, Lewis was cast in another leading role, as CIA operative Harris Chang in “The Quantum Spy”, based on the David Ignatius thriller novel of the same name. Although years have passed since the initial announcement, and the project appears to have come to a grinding halt, fans of the actor still hope to see Lewis star in the TV adaptation.
Straying away from his usual characters, Lewis played Kip in the 2022 romcom “About Fate”, a remake of the 1976 TV film “The Irony of Fate”. Lewis’s on-screen girlfriend, Margot Hayes, was played by Emma Roberts; during a romantic dinner date, Margot hoped that Kip would propose to her before her sister’s wedding, so that she could announce the good news; when that didn’t happen, she walked out. They broke up shortly afterwards and Margot began a relationship with Thomas Mann’s character, Griffin, who had also recently broken up from his girlfriend.
2023
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, India, Lewis revealed that he’s been working on screenplays for a long time, and experimenting with different writing styles. His unreleased written projects include a screenplay about his father that he wants to direct in the future: “It’s a very interesting narrative about martial arts and about dance in 1970s London, as an Asian man who was competing in the disco as well as in the martial arts circuit,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Lewis has also shot music videos, fashion advertisements, and short films, with plenty of projects in production and pre-production stages. As for his personal life, he was previously in a relationship with Emi Renata, and has yet to rejoin the dating scene.
Lewis’s net worth is estimated to be $2.5 million, which is certainly impressive for someone who is just gaining recognition in acting after so many years.
