Chinese-Canadian actor and entrepreneur Kent S. Leung has built a career defined by crossing borders, cultures and creative disciplines. Over the past fifteen years, his work has taken him from Canada and China to leading roles in Pakistani and Nigerian cinema, alongside television, film, hosting and international productions. His path has rarely followed convention. Instead, it has been shaped by persistence, curiosity and a willingness to step into unfamiliar territory, both as an actor and as a person. From representing Chinese characters on screens around the world to building a career across very different entertainment industries, Kent has continued to find opportunity in places he never expected when he first began acting.
Today, that journey is entering a new chapter. Acting remains at the heart of Kent’s creative identity, but his ambitions have expanded through Cozmikk Entertainment, the company he founded to connect talent, productions and opportunities across cultures. What began with actor development has grown into work spanning talent representation, casting and production, giving Kent the opportunity to contribute to the entertainment industry from a very different perspective. After years spent navigating the divide between Eastern and Western entertainment, many of the challenges he experienced personally have become the foundation for what he is now building. It is an evolution that has pushed him to reconsider what it means to be an actor, a founder and a creative professional at a time when the industry itself is changing rapidly.
For this
FFashionTV
feature, Kent steps into a confident and more physically expressive visual chapter while reflecting on the experiences that brought him here. He speaks candidly about international milestones, discipline and insecurity, the sacrifices behind building Cozmikk, and his ambition to eventually create original projects as both an actor and filmmaker. At its heart, this is not a story about leaving one identity behind for another. It is about allowing the world around that identity to become bigger. Join us as we speak with Kent S. Leung about crossing borders, redefining success and building a world beyond the screen.
1. This cover arrives during an important period of transformation in your career. Who is Kent S. Leung today?
Look, if you’re going to give me the opportunity to refer to myself in the third person, I’m going to take it. Kent S. Leung today is going through a major shift in how he understands what it means to be an actor and a lifelong contributor to the global entertainment industry. It took me a long time to realize that a successful actor in this day and age can do much more than act, and that there is no single path to success. I feel fortunate to have discovered a path that allows me to evolve from being a passive actor waiting to be chosen into an active participant in building opportunities, projects and creative relationships. Through founding Cozmikk Entertainment, I now have the chance to work alongside other decision-makers and contribute to the industry from both sides of the camera. I am still an actor at my core, but the world around that identity has become much larger.
2. Fashion and acting both involve identity and transformation. How has your personal style evolved as you have grown from actor to company founder?
Now that I spend a large part of my time in an office, leading meetings and running a company, I have a renewed appreciation for opportunities to dress creatively and explore fashion. There was a period when I was so immersed in building Cozmikk that I had very little capacity to think about personal style. As the company has grown and become more stable, I have gradually created more time and energy to return to the public-facing and expressive side of my life as an actor and performer. Photoshoots like this remind me that presentation, physical preparation and visual storytelling remain meaningful parts of who I am. At this stage, I am excited to challenge the stereotype of what a founder is supposed to look like. I do not want to trade creativity for authority or fit myself into a single category; I want to be fully myself, a creative entrepreneur whose career has never fit neatly into one box.
3. This shoot reveals a more physical and vulnerable side of you. What role do discipline, vulnerability and physical confidence play in your life today?
Discipline is incredibly multifaceted. People often think of it as eating properly or going to the gym, but as you take on more responsibilities, discipline also becomes mental, creative and strategic. The more opportunities Cozmikk encounters, the more disciplined I must be about deciding what genuinely deserves my attention and what does not. Vulnerability is equally important because becoming a founder and sitting in rooms with highly experienced international teams requires me to recognize what I still need to learn. Growth demands that you admit, at least to yourself, where you are inexperienced and where you must improve. Physical confidence remains one of my foundations; it helped me grow from someone who was bullied in high school into a man willing to place himself in difficult, exposed and sometimes frightening situations. Most importantly, I am entering a stage of life where these different facets feel balanced in a healthier way. I can own the work I have put into myself without needing to prove anything to anyone except myself.
4. Your career has taken you across Canada, China, Pakistan and Nigeria. How have these different cultures shaped you as an actor and as a person?
I have been incredibly fortunate to work in very different parts of the world and within very different cultures. My greatest takeaway is that human beings are far more similar than the divisions around us sometimes suggest. We all want to love and be loved, to feel safe, to experience happiness and to create some form of success. Recognizing that has helped me connect with people wherever I go, even when our backgrounds or experiences appear completely different. We do not choose where we are born, but we can choose how we treat the people we meet. As an actor, life experience becomes part of our creative palette, and encountering people from so many walks of life has given me a much richer range of colours from which to build future characters.
5. Your career has been defined by crossing borders. From becoming the first Chinese actor to lead a Pakistani feature film in Chalay Thay Saath to reportedly becoming the first Chinese actor to lead a Nigerian feature film in The Shadow of Greed, what do these milestones mean to you?
Both milestones mean a great deal to me, but in different ways. Becoming the first Chinese actor to lead a Pakistani feature film was a real turning point. There is a great deal of cynicism in this industry, and whether that voice came from outside or from within me, I often questioned who I was to believe I could succeed in a profession known for being so difficult. Beneath the confidence I projected when I first began training was a deep uncertainty about whether the journey would ever amount to something substantial. Playing Adam in Chalay Thay Saath showed me that much of that cynicism was misplaced; it proved that hard work and genuine persistence could take me somewhere I had never imagined. Playing Jerry in The Shadow of Greed meant something different: it showed me how much uncharted territory still exists in international cinema, and how many compelling stories involving Chinese characters, culture and the wider diaspora remain to be told. I left Vancouver for China hoping to expand my career, but I never imagined that journey would carry me into Pakistani and Nigerian cinema, allowing me to represent Chinese actors on the international stage and contribute to the evolving story of the Chinese diaspora.
6. After 15 years in front of the camera, what made you begin thinking like an entrepreneur?
Becoming an entrepreneur felt like a natural evolution, although it was not always an easy identity for me to accept. My wife has been a major influence because she was already an entrepreneur when I met her and built a successful styling company through her own vision and persistence. Watching her taught me that creating something yourself requires a different kind of courage from pursuing opportunities created by other people. I also realized that I had always thought like a mentor before I thought like a businessman; I genuinely enjoyed sharing the lessons I had learned and helping younger actors navigate the industry more intelligently. Cozmikk gave me a platform not only to coach performers, but eventually to help create opportunities, cast them in projects and support their development. That ability to turn experience into something useful for other people has become one of the most rewarding parts of entrepreneurship for me.
7. What inspired you to create Cozmikk Entertainment, and how has that original vision evolved?
The inspiration behind Cozmikk is multifaceted, but much of it came from gaps I experienced firsthand as an actor. We began as an acting studio because I understood what performers needed in terms of craft, preparation and professional guidance. At the same time, being a Chinese-Canadian who has lived and worked in China for more than a decade exposed me to many cross-cultural needs that were not being met. Technology has made the world more connected, but the divide between Eastern and Western entertainment industries remains very real, in language, expectations, working styles and access. Many of the challenges I faced while building a life and career in China eventually became knowledge that could help other artists and productions navigate those same gaps. That experience is the foundation of Cozmikk: a company built to serve as a practical and creative bridge between cultures, talent and industries.
8. How has your own experience as an actor influenced the way you discover and support other performers?
My own experience as an actor has shaped almost every aspect of how I work with performers. I still remember my earliest conversations with acting teachers and agents, when I was extremely inexperienced and had very little understanding of what the industry actually required from me. Because I remember how uncertain and misinformed I felt, I try to respond to younger performers with empathy rather than judgment or superiority. I see an opportunity to guide them toward a healthier and, ideally, more sustainable way of approaching their careers. Acting can be psychologically demanding because so much of your identity and self-worth can become attached to decisions you do not control. After 15 years as an actor and now as the founder of a company contributing to the industry, I have a deeper understanding of how to prepare performers not only for auditions and roles, but for the emotional reality of the profession.
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9. Cozmikk has begun taking on increasingly ambitious work, some of which remains confidential. Was there a recent experience that changed how you understood the company’s potential?
Absolutely. I wish I could share more about some of the work Cozmikk has recently become involved in, but discretion and patience are part of being a professional partner. What I can say is that participating in increasingly ambitious and internationally complex assignments has allowed me to observe the standards under which highly experienced teams operate. Their clarity, preparation, communication and reliability have shown me that professionalism can never be replaced, regardless of how technology or the industry itself evolves. These experiences have also helped me understand where opportunities exist for a company like ours and what level we must consistently meet to deserve that trust. During this process, I have grown as a leader and realized that leadership is not about doing everything myself; it is about setting a standard for the people around me to uphold while accepting responsibility whenever that standard is not met. That realization significantly expanded my understanding of what Cozmikk could eventually become and what it truly means to operate at a higher level within this industry.
10. Building a company can easily consume its founder. How do you protect the actor and creative artist within you?
This has genuinely been a struggle, but I also believe that, for a period of time, it was necessary. The founder had to take the lead, and if I had been overly protective of my previous identity as an actor, I might have prevented both the company and myself from growing. There is no rule stating that an actor must live exactly the same life 365 days a year, and redefining that identity took time. Stepping back from certain parts of acting was not abandonment; it was an investment in building something that could eventually create a larger world around my creative life. Now that Cozmikk is becoming more established, I am gradually returning to acting from a stronger and more intentional position. I have also protected the artist within me through producing theatre, working around performers, leading workshops and coaching actors one-on-one. Sometimes I remain connected to creativity through my own performance, and sometimes through helping another artist discover theirs.
11. What does the next stage of growth look like for Cozmikk Entertainment?
The next stage of Cozmikk’s growth is about strengthening our systems, deepening the relationships we already have and carefully developing the new partnerships now taking shape. From there, I want us to move beyond supporting other people’s projects and begin creating original productions and intellectual property of our own. That is a major goal because it would bring Cozmikk back into a deeply creative space while also allowing the company to reinvest in my own development as an actor and filmmaker. I have ambitions not only to perform, but also to help originate and shape projects from their earliest stages. I see Cozmikk becoming an integral part of my evolution from actor to founder to filmmaker and back to being an actor, but now as one who's maturity and experience in life brings something new not ownly to my body of work but add something exciting in the projects we help bring to life.
12. What does success mean to you now, and what do you hope the name Kent S. Leung represents in the future?
In its purest form, success means achieving the meaningful things you genuinely set out to do. I set out to become an actor, to play leading roles in feature films and eventually to build a company that could provide value and contribute to the continued evolution of this industry. I also want to be a loving and supportive husband, brother and son, because professional achievement means very little if the people closest to you are neglected along the way. Success should not come from ego or from a destructive belief that you can never step away from a goal; it should come from purpose, responsibility and a real desire to grow. I hope the name Kent S. Leung eventually represents someone who worked hard, embraced unconventional paths and created opportunities that extended beyond his own career. There is no single road to success, and sometimes courage means recognizing that the right path may look completely different from the one you originally imagined.
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Talent: Kent Shing Leung @kentsleung
Photographer: Dalong Yang @dalongdalong
Stylist: Kathy @ivyplume_official
@ivyleung_
Styling Assistant: Yee @ivyplume_official
Hair & Makeup: Jelly
Photo assistant：Meng
