Zack Lee: Movies & Filmography

Zack Lee Jowono, known professionally as Zack Lee, is an Indonesian‑British actor, model and former boxer whose career has spanned over two decades across Southeast Asian cinema and international festivals. Born on 15 August 1984 in Liverpool, England, he is the son of a British mother and an Indonesian father of Chinese descent, and grew up as the second of five children before moving to Jakarta after his parents’ divorce. Raised initially as a Buddhist, Lee embraced Christianity at the age of nineteen, a conversion that later influenced both his personal life and public image. He entered the entertainment industry as a fashion model in the early 2000s, quickly transitioning to television soap operas where his striking presence earned him early notoriety. Lee’s breakthrough on the big screen arrived with the 2005 action film Bad Wolves, in which he portrayed the ruthless leader of a blood‑thirsty gang, a performance that garnered critical praise and established him as a compelling action star. He continued to build a reputation for physical intensity, appearing in notable projects such as The Raid 2: Berandal (2014), which premiered at Sundance, and Headshot (2016), screened in Toronto’s Midnight Madness program. In 2018 he achieved wider international exposure through the Netflix Original The Night Comes for Us, the first Indonesian feature on the platform, and also starred in the HBO Asia series Grisse. That same year he contributed to Buffalo Boys, Singapore’s official submission for the 91st Academy Awards, and appeared in the superhero film Gundala. Beyond acting, Lee is an avid culinary enthusiast; together with his family he operates a noodle shop called Bakmi Omlee and pursues food‑related entrepreneurship. His personal life includes a marriage to fellow entertainer Nafa Urbach, with whom he has a daughter, though the couple later divorced. Despite occasional controversy, such as the looting of his Bintaro home during the August 2025 riots, Lee remains a prominent figure in Indonesian popular culture, celebrated for his versatility, physicality, and cross‑cultural background.