JET LI HAS kicked and punched his way from Hong Kong to Hollywood. But, he says, the time has come to tackle the more serious aspects of his art. And he's hoping his role in director Zhang Yimou's $242-million martial arts epic Hero will be the turning point in his career.

Talking on the eve of Hero's Hong Kong premiere, Li says that, for the first time, he has found himself involved in a project that relies on a lot more than his own fancy footwork. 'This film is very special, and it's very special in my life,' says the 39-year-old Los Angeles-based star. 'I've made about 30 films, and action films have a very narrow scope. They talk about revenge, revenge, revenge. You're just a guy fighting with the bad guy or whatever. But this film, this genre, talks about life, about peace. It's very deep and I've never been involved in a movie that's this deep.'

Despite the hype building around the film - Hero has been labelled an 'Oscar hopeful' and has been receiving the sort of blanket media coverage usually reserved for such productions - Li looks relaxed and comfortable, dressed in casual brown cords and a black shirt that stretches tight across his compact frame. His face lights up in a smile when recalling the first time he read the script for Hero, penned by Zhang, Li Feng and Wang Bin. 'I was amazed,' he says. 'Zhang Yimou is a director with an amazing vision, and you could tell that from the script. We have a saying with Chinese films that the flower is the main character, and everyone else is the leaves that surround the flower. But with this film, the director is definitely the flower. All the actors are the leaves. The whole story here is the director's.'

The film (which also stars Maggie Cheung Man-yuk, Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Zhang Zhiyi) is based on events in China during the third century BC. Li plays a sheriff, enigmatically called 'Nameless', who must decide whether to continue his violent ways. It is a decision that must also be made by the emperor Qin Shihuangdi, whose life has been threatened by three legendary assassins.

Li himself has been mulling the question for some time. 'In the past few years, I've been working in the States and in the beginning, of course I was very happy because there were a lot of young kids shouting 'Jet Li, kick ass!',' Li says. 'But after a while I've had to reconsider what I've been doing.

'Everybody knows martial arts. They like to kick people, they like to fight. But that is just part of my culture. China has a very strong philosophy that I want to share. I want to give people both sets of information, not just the fights, not just the kick ass. Martial arts is just a tool, it's not the goal. The goal is peace.'

He says he realises the large studios, particularly the American ones, have kept his range of roles very narrow but that he'd like to start finding new challenges, films that - like Hero - give him characters with more scope. 'It's really difficult for me to make this kind of film,' he says. 'All they want is violence and action. So I've realised I have to make the commercial action films but then go away and make more independent things, films that have more meaning to them than just the action.'

Li - who made the previously unheard of move to warn parents on his personal Web site of the high level of violence in his film Kiss Of The Dragon (2001), urging them to keep their kids away - has also come to realise the effect his films have on his audiences. And it is something that worries him. 'We don't do martial arts because we like fighting or kicking another person, we do it because we want to stop the violence,' says Li, who was a wushu world champion before becoming an actor. 'I want to show people that violence is not the only solution. I feel like I have a responsibility. If I continue to make action, action, action, action, when I get old I will feel guilty because there will be a generation of people who are only learning the violent things from these movies.

'It affects them. I see the young kids fighting on the street and I feel the information you give them is not right. It's like the police - they have guns but they are to protect people. And that's what martial arts is all about.'

Part of the reason behind Li's reassessment of the roles he plays and the films he chooses comes through his study of Buddhism, a practice he started as a child but which he has stepped up in the past five years. It has something that has helped shape his life, he says, and it is the reason he comes across as such a relaxed, calm and happy person.

'It has helped me see the past is the past,' he says. 'The future hasn't come yet, so I concentrate on the now. So I just focus on today and try my best. That way if the studios ever say 'Forget it Jet, you're finished', I'll be happy to retire.

'[Buddhism] has made me very happy. I never feel under pressure and I have hope. Before, I sometimes felt pressure even in Hong Kong from the studios, thinking that maybe I could have done things better. But after studying Buddhism I come at things from a different angle.'

With a weight of expectation hanging over Hero, Li is putting this mindset into practice at the moment. Whether or not it is successful is beyond his control, he says. And, despite the fact that people will obviously compare the film to Ang Lee's Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2001), he hopes Hero will be judged on its merits.

'You can't really compare this film with Crouching Tiger because that film was a miracle,' he says. 'Suddenly Chinese cinema became mainstream. So really the best thing to do is to learn from it, how to promote a film and what the audience likes.

'I have tried my best already. Whatever happens now is beyond my control so I can't worry.'

Hero opens today.

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