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Charmaine Yu

Theatre emphasises the principle of directorial intention, a specific creative vision and message that a performance aims to communicate.
Hong Kong-born actress Kaja Chan applies this theory to her life. She has known she wanted to act for as long as she can remember, and has steered her career with unwavering focus.
Chan, 25, was born to a Polish mother and Chinese father and grew up in Sha Tin and Tai Po in Hong Kong’s New Territories.
Now based in London, Chan is making her mark across every medium, having appeared in Netflix’s Bridgerton season 2, headlined indie short films and delivered both a voice-over and motion capture performance for the hit video game Split Fiction (2025), a role that earned her a longlist nomination for the 2026 Bafta Game Awards.
She has also performed at venues such as London’s Royal Court Theatre and the Old Vic but still remembers being cast as the lead in her school play at age seven.
“I was on cloud nine, having the time of my life – and then swine flu hit,” she recalls of the play that was subsequently cancelled. “But from that young age, I had this clarity of vision that this was not going to be the last time I acted in a play … That lost opportunity, failure, rejection by the world made me even more determined to make it happen.”


Breaking into the industry
Chan balanced the demands of school while acting in youth projects with arts organisations such as the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation and the Absolutely Fabulous Theatre Connection.
In 2018, Chan went to university in the UK to study media and communications, with plans to become a broadcast journalist, but went to auditions in London between studying to soothe the “burning desire” and “agony” she says she felt when theatre was missing from her life.
By the end of her first year of university, she had booked an agent. When she graduated, she no longer needed a job in journalism.
Projects that excite Chan most are those in which she can showcase her culture and heritage. An example is Scenes from a Repatriation, a play staged in London in 2025 that challenged the British Museum’s upholding of colonial violence. Chan says working on the project, alongside actors of Chinese heritage, allowed her to get in touch with her roots.
Chan is also proud of her part in the second season of Bridgerton, as Miss Weston, one of the debutantes who dances with Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) and gossips with the ladies.
She is not the only Hong Kong-born actress to have appeared in the hit drama. Isabella Wei played Posy Li in Bridgerton’s fourth season, and worked with Chan on another Netflix production, 1899, in which the two shared a scene speaking Cantonese with each other on a sampan.

Split Fiction is perhaps Chan’s most high-profile project yet. The action-adventure game received four nominations for the 2026 Bafta Games Awards. She had to rely heavily on voice acting when she stepped into the role of the leading character, Mio, and provided the motion capture performance, which she says was a thrilling challenge.
“Motion capture is, in my opinion, the most intuitive form of acting,” she says. “You’re kind of alone in an empty space. You’re wearing a Velcro suit with weird dots all over it, you’ve got a helmet camera in your face, and you’re overheating … but otherwise you’re just in a room playing and that’s what we have been doing since we were children.”
Chan also acted as a gorilla for the video game, with bionic arms strapped to her limbs while she made strange noises – an experience she describes as “so much fun”.












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Chan’s smaller roles include a period drama about menstruation titled Period Drama (2023), BBC’s short film Peak Male Excellence (2025) and the 2025 indie short film What Would Mother Say? by British-Chinese filmmaker Louis Chan.
She also voice-acted alongside American actor Jeff Goldblum for the video game Jurassic World Evolution 3, starring as Kira Chang.
“The thing with him is that he’ll never perform his lines as written, so I have to completely react off of the energy he gives me, and he is incredible,” Chan says of voice-acting alongside the Hollywood star.
‘Keep putting your art into people’s faces’
Chan will soon star in the coming season of the sci-fi series Silo opposite Rebecca Ferguson, whom Chan describes as a down-to-earth person who leads with authority and integrity.
“I came in as a young actor whom she’d never seen before with big ideas for a scene that she wasn’t sure about. But she listened, and we worked as equals,” Chan says of the Swedish actress. “She gave me so much confidence in myself going forward, and for that I will be forever grateful.”

Chan also credits her mentors in Hong Kong and acknowledges her privilege of attending a school with teachers and parents who respected the dramatic arts.
Her advice to young Hongkongers with a passion for theatre is to “keep putting your art into people’s faces”, and to “research the crazy c*** out of the creative scene around you”. She is also a strong proponent for more arts in Hong Kong schools, especially local ones.
Looking ahead, Chan is excited to try everything that comes her way, whether in the UK or Hong Kong or anywhere else.
“I am a glutton for experience,” she says, laughing. “Anything that continues to allow me to express myself, move people or spark change in the world, then I will be satisfied. But I have a feeling I’m most likely going to be eternally unsatisfied and exploring.”

Chan’s greatest ambition is to write, direct or act in a period drama set in Hong Kong.
“There are so many actors of Hong Kong and Asian descent that [have] come to the UK, and what I’ve discovered is that the East Asian acting community is very good at working together to push for further opportunities,” she says. “So I’m really excited to be taking part in that push of the narrative.”


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London-based actress who has appeared on Bridgerton and worked with Jeff Goldblum shares how ‘clarity of vision’ drove her from a young age


London-based actress who has appeared on Bridgerton and worked with Jeff Goldblum shares how ‘clarity of vision’ drove her from a young age.


Hong Kong-born actress Kaja Chan on her ‘burning desire’ as she rises on TV, video games

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}London-based actress who has appeared on Bridgerton and worked with Jeff Goldblum shares how ‘clarity of vision’ drove her from a young age

London-based actress who has appeared on Bridgerton and worked with Jeff Goldblum shares how ‘clarity of vision’ drove her from a young age