Margaret Denise Quigley (known to the most of us as Maggie Q, born May 22, 1979 in Honolulu, Hawaii) is an American (of Irish, Polish and Vietnamese descent, via Hawaii) actress and former model. After being scouted by Jackie Chan, she starred in lesser-known films such as Naked Weapon and Rice Rhapsody before going on to roles in Mission: Impossible III and Balls of Fury. She starred as the titular character of Nikita and the protagonist of the short-lived CBS series Stalker (2014), and is also part of the main cast of the ABC series Designated Survivor. She is perhaps known for playing a female spy/action hero/Action Girl in a lot of her roles, and usually doing her own stunts while she's at it.
She was engaged to Dylan McDermott, her Stalker costar, from 2015 to 2019.
Notable roles
- Rush Hour 2 (2001) as Girl in Car
- Naked Weapon (2002) as Charlene Ching
- Around the World in 80 Days (2004) as Female Agent
- House of Harmony (2005) as Harmony
- Mission: Impossible III (2006) as Zhen Lei
- Live Free or Die Hard (2007) as Mai Linh
- Balls of Fury (2007) as Maggie Wong
- Need for Speed: Undercover (2008) as Chase Linh
- Operation: Endgame (2010) as High Priestess
- The King of Fighters (2010) as Mai Shiranui
- Nikita (2010-13) as Nikita Mears
- Priest (2011) as Priestess
- Young Justice (2012, 2019) as Diana of Themiscyra / Wonder Woman (voice)
- Divergent and its sequels (2014-16) as Tori Wu
- Stalker (2014-15) as Beth Davis
- Designated Survivor (2016-19) as Hannah Wells
- The Con is On (2018) as Irina Solokov
- Fantasy Island (2020) as Gwen Olsen
Maggie's roles include the following tropes
- Action Girl: She performs all of her own stunts despite never having had martial arts training, as many assume.
- Celebrity Voice Actor: She voices Wonder Woman on Young Justice (2010).
- Dysfunction Junction: Most evident in Nikita and Naked Weapon.
- Fake Nationality: Many of her roles are as Chinese or Chinese-American characters. She also played a Japanese fighter in The King of Fighters.
- Faux Fluency: In her Hong Kong and Chinese films, as she does not speak Chinese and had to learn all of her lines phonetically.
- Femme Fatale Spy: Nikita, while unquestionably an Action Girl, can sometimes double as this.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: She has played (more than once) a character of a young woman forced to be a spy.
