Aiiiii-ee ya! Enter the dragon who taught Keanu his kicks

From 'The Matrix' to 'Kill Bill' - Yeun Woo Ping is Hollywood's kung fu king, says Nick Edwards

Kill Bill, the forthcoming Quentin Tarantino film, sees the culmination of a wave of popularity of martial arts in movies that hasn't been seen since the demise of Bruce Lee. After an absence of seven years one of the most celebrated directors of the last decade is billing his new work as a "kung fu epic". This follows a summer of high-kick flicks ranging from mainstream products such as Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle to the arthouse Hero - a film hailed as this year's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and currently waiting a UK release date - not to mention the double bill Matrix sequels.

What you might not know is that behind all of the fight action in these films is one man: the unassuming 58-year-old Chinese film director and martial arts choreographer, Yeun Woo Ping. A legend in his home in Hong Kong, Yeun's work first came to mainstream attention in 1999 when the Wachowski brothers employed him to design the blend of kung fu and science fiction that their new script, The Matrix, demanded. Finding that "no one understood the level of action sequences we wanted, the scale you can pull off in comics," they turned to Yeun, the director of one of their own personal favourite films, the kung fu classic Fist of Legend.

After the success of The Matrix, for which he taught Keanu Reeves his now legendary moves, Yeun was the obvious choice to create the gravity-defying wire work and kung fu ballet that took place above the roof tops of Ang Lee's Oscar winning masterpiece Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Now he is the first choice of Hollywood directors who wish to spice up their fight sequences - an area of film-making that had hardly changed since the days of John Wayne's "hay-making" swings.

With such a glittering CV you might expect Yeun to have the air of a prima donna, but nothing could be further from the truth. Although a kung fu "master" he has no time to discuss the spirituality and philosophy behind his art, preferring to concentrate on what he is paid for. "The only thing we teach is how to kick and how to punch to make the actions look more elegant or more powerful," he says. "We don't talk about the philosophy behind the moves. If we had to do that we'd need another eight to 10 years to train the actor!"

After leaving the Chinese city of Guangzhou, where he was born in 1945, Yeun served as an apprentice contract actor/stunt man in the notoriously tough Hong Kong film industry where there was little time for anything but economics. He then became a producer of TV shows, finally graduating as a director of chop-socky epics for the notorious Shaw Brothers - the guys who have had a strangle hold on film making in Hong Kong. But Yeun stepped ahead of his peers when he cast the then unknown Jackie Chan in one of the most successful Asian films of all time, Drunken Master. In this work he also created the now familiar blend of kung fu and comedy that is still produced today (see Chan in this year's Tuxedo).

Although Yeun became the most successful director in Asia, the position allowed for little of the self indulgence enjoyed by his Hollywood counterparts. Donnie Yen, one of Yeun's more recent proteges and star of Hero, points out that "In Hong Kong you can be working on three or four films at the same time ... and where as an average budget for a US film is $60m a generous budget for an Asian film is $2.5m."

In the Seventies Yeun himself would produce up to 20 movies a year. Though nothing compares to the hardships he endured receiving an education under the Peking Opera School method, taught by his father and respected kung fu master Yeun Siu-Tin. "He was worse to us [his 10 brothers and sisters] than the apprentices. If it was really bad he'd put us across a bench and spank our bottoms. But he'd never beat us with a stick around the head until we bled, that wasn't unusual then."

Kung fu, before it became the name for a martial art, meant "hard work and time spent", and there could be no more fitting epithet for Yeun's life and work. Cultivating such an attitude of forebearance in the heady worlds of film-making in Hong Kong and Hollywood must have played no small part in getting him to the top. He sits now with the air of a humble journeyman rather than someone who has played an integral part in the recent movie history of two continents.

'Kill Bill' is out on 10 October. 'The Matrix Revolutions' is out on 7 November