Elfina Luk scales new heights with ‘Skyscraper’
Elfina Luk shed real tears when she found out that she’d booked a role in Skyscraper, and no wonder: even though the Vancouver actress had amassed an impressive filmography over the course of her career, Skyscraper would be her biggest project to date, and would put her in the same film as Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
Which is why Luk was devastated when, shortly after arriving on set for her first day, she thought she’d blown the opportunity to bits.
“We did a lot of shooting [with prop guns] – the film had probably the most bullets fired on any set that I’ve been on – and a recoil hit my eye and I had a black eye and I was bleeding and I was swelling up and was like, ‘Oh my god, this is the first day of work!’” Luk chuckles at the memory. “Luckily we didn’t see camera that night and everyone there took really good care of me.” She went home and put arnica gel on her wound, and “when I went back to work the next day, it had gone down so much.”
Still, “Imagine all the thoughts going through my head: ‘Oh my god! They’re going to get rid of me!’ But it worked out really well.”
Skyscraper stars The Rock as an ex-FBI agent who goes to incredible lengths to save his wife (Neve Campbell) and two children from a 225-floor towering inferno located in Hong Kong.
The highly anticipated action thriller – which opens July 13 and was written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) – filmed in Vancouver, LA, and Hong Kong last year. Luk (who plays Anna Xie on OMNI Television’s groundbreaking multilingual family drama Blood and Water) appears as Hong Kong police officer Sergeant Han; Luk’s Blood and Water co-star Byron Mann plays her partner, Inspector Wu.
“There’s a lot of intensity in the film,” says Luk, who attended Skyscraper’s LA premiere earlier this month. “There are some really poignant moments that give you breathing room to acknowledge and appreciate the intensity of it all.”
As for The Rock, Luk says he’s “as big as you would think, and when I met him and I observed him, I really saw elements of a professional, a humble man. He’s really focused on what he does, and he has respect for everyone around him. That, to me, showed a lot of professionalism, which I respect, and I really appreciated being on a set with him. I could understand like, ‘This is why people want to work with you, and why you do what you do.’”
Elfina Luk. Photo by Jennifer Picard Photography
Filming for Skyscraper occurred during a particularly intense period in Luk’s career. “During the time of Skyscraper and before the third season of Blood and Water, I was in between six shows,” says Luk. “At one point, I had to camp out in the back of my truck because I was going from a night shoot into the morning on another show.”
The intensity continues for Luk: she’s got the third season of Blood and Water set to air, as well as a plum role in Karen Lam’s upcoming feature film The Curse of Willow Song. She’s also expanding her showbiz work to include producing narrative and documentary films.
“I’ve been an entrepreneur since my early 20s, and I feel like this is a skill I don’t want to let go of, so why not put it towards something that I love that I’m already doing?” Despite her growing interest in producing, Luk says she’ll “never let go of acting. I’m not whole unless I also have the business side going on. What’s happening now is I’m putting two and two together.
Skyscraper is currently showing in theatres worldwide. Follow @ElfinaLuk.
