Maggie Q

"Not only do I not want to be stereotyped as this Asian girl who fights - gee, what a wonder - but also I have more to offer than that."

—Maggie Q on typecasting

Margaret Denise Quigley (known to the most of us as Maggie Q) 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 the third |Mission Impossible and Balls of Fury. She now stars in the popular CW Television Network series Nikita.

She is probably perhaps known for playing a female spy/action hero/ActionGirl in a lot of her roles, and usually doing her own stunts while she's at it.

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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.
• Come with Me If You Want to Live
• Corrupt Corporate Executive
• Dangerously Genre Savvy: Some of Maggie's later work, Nikita being a prime example.
• Death by Origin Story: Nikita's fiancé.
• Dysfunction Junction: Most evident in Nikita and Naked Weapon.
• Gun Porn
• Honey Trap
• I Just Want to Be Normal: She has played (more than once) a character of a young woman forced to be a spy.
• Mata Hari: Nikita, while unquestionably an Action Girl, can sometimes double as this.

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Tropes applying to Maggie Q:

• But Not Too Foreign: She started her career in Asia and presumably used "Q" as a last name to disguise her Western heritage. She inverts the trend by continuing to use it in Western roles to make her sound more Asian.
• Promoted Fangirl: Maggie revealed in an interview released by IGN that she was a fan of Wonder Woman in her younger years. So much that she didn't hesitate to say yes in voicing Wonder Woman in Young Justice.