Daniel Wu Yan-Zu (Chinese: 吳彥祖; pinyin: Wú Yànzǔ; born September 30, 1974) is an Hong Kong-American actor, director and producer. He is known as a "flexible and distinctive" leading actor in the Chinese language film industry. Since his film debut in 1998, he has been featured in over 60 films. He also stars in the AMC martial arts drama series Into the Badlands.
Wu was born in Berkeley, California, and raised in Orinda, California. His parents, Diana, a college professor and George Wu, a retired engineer, are natives of Shanghai, China. His father immigrated to the United States after the communist revolution in China in 1949 and met his mother in New York, where she was a student. After marrying, they settled in California. Wu has two older sisters, Greta and Gloria and an older brother who died when he was two.
Wu developed an interest in martial arts when he saw Jet Li in The Shaolin Temple and Donnie Yen in Iron Monkey, and consequently began studying wushu at age 11. His childhood role model was Jackie Chan, a man who now considers Wu "like a son". Wu attended the Head-Royce School in Oakland, California and later majored in architecture at the University of Oregon. While there, he founded the University of Oregon Wushu Club in 1994 and served as the team's first coach. During this time, Wu also took film classes and frequented local theaters, and came to enjoy the works of filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa and Luc Besson, whom he describes as "men of vision."