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.”