Ming-Na Wen (simplified Chinese: 温明娜; traditional Chinese: 溫明娜; pinyin: Wēn Míngnà; born November 20, 1963) is a Chinese-born American actress. She has been credited with and without her family name, but most credits since the late 1990s have been without it.
Ming-Na was born on Coloane Island, Macau, to Chinese parents and moved to the U.S. as a child. Her mother, Lin Chan Wen, is a nurse. Ming-Na attended high school in the Pittsburgh suburb of Mt. Lebanon, and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama from Carnegie Mellon University, the same university that ER producer John Wells attended.
She married American film writer Kirk Aanes in 1990, but they divorced in 1993. She got married for the second time on June 16, 1995, with Eric Michael Zee, and has since then had two children. As of 2007, she and her family live in Calabasas, California.
Ming-Na's most prominent role may be as Dr. Jing-Mei "Deb" Chen on the NBC drama series, ER. She first guest starred during the first season. Five years later, she was invited back as a series regular in Season 6 and remained on the show until midway through Season 11. Ming-Na appeared in the movie version of Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club and played Chun-Li in Street Fighter. She also appeared in a supporting role on the comedy series The Single Guy which starred Jonathan Silverman.
Ming-Na also provided the voice for the title character in Disney's animated movie Mulan, and its sequel Mulan II, as well as reprising her role in the Square Enix/Disney videogame Kingdom Hearts II, Aki Ross in the computer animated film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and Detective Ellen Yin in the animated series The Batman. She was also the voice actress for Jade, a minor character in the HBO animated series Spawn.
In 2004, she took part in a Hollywood Home Game on the World Poker Tour, and won. In fall 2005, she starred on the NBC drama series Inconceivable as the lead character, Rachel Lu. However, the series was cancelled after only a few episodes. Her next TV role was an FBI agent in the FOX kidnap drama series Vanished, which premiered in the fall of 2006 then was cancelled roughly three months later. She also has played a small role as a college professor in The George Lopez Show.
On October 8 through October 29, 2007, Ming-Na appeared in a four-episode arc of CBS' Two and a Half Men playing Charlie Sheen's love interest.
