Jet Li takes action

"The Mummy" star Jet Li has set up a philanthropic foundation. (Jc matsuura FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)

LOS ANGELES - Yeah, yeah, Jet Li's name is above the title in his latest movie. One better, Li is the title. He's the mummy in "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor," the third in the Brendan Fraser franchise.

Actually, Li's mummy isn't a mummy in the traditional sense: No shrouds, no stiff-legged walk, no low-throated hum. This one's all fire and (brim)stone and thick black ponytail. But those are just technicalities. And Li - martial arts master, international movie star - isn't all that interested in talking about them - or "The Mummy" at all.

No disrespect to his good friend director Rob Cohen (blockbusters "The Fast and the Furious," "xXx," and, unfortunately, "Stealth"), but Li has already moved on from his role as Emperor Han in the action-adventure movie set in China, in a sense from movies altogether. Seated for an interview, studio employees available to meet his every need, Li would rather talk about what he calls his third career: philanthropy.

"I need to pay back to the world," says Li, one of Asia's biggest action stars at 45. "I started in China because I know the culture very well. In the future I will help elsewhere in Asia, then maybe five or 10 years later in other places in the world. Wherever they need help, I will do my best."

Li's philanthropic bent grew out of personal experience. The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that tore apart South Asia hit his own family hard. Li says his youngest daughter, now 5, had to be rescued from the raging waters. He says he understood immediately the point of his celebrity. Sure he wants the third round of "The Mummy" to make money. But he also sees it as an opportunity to raise cash for his China-based charity.

Called the Jet Li One Foundation Project, the organization thinks big by thinking small: 1 person + 1 dollar + 1 month = 1 big family. The idea is that everyone can give something, everyone can do something, everyone together can make a difference.

"We're a big global family," says Li, a devout Buddhist. "The most important thing is everybody is involved, not just government, not just big companies taking responsibility."

Still, it's exciting to co-star in a big-budget American movie. Li's been making movies for almost a quarter century, having made his first appearance in an English-language film ("Lethal Weapon 4") a decade ago. This time around he's got a villain to sell, which hasn't often been the case in his career.

"Once in a while it's fun to play because I always play the good guy, and the good guy has a lot of responsibility, he needs to take care of family, children, neighbors, dog," says Li, whose English is impressive but not impeccable. "The villain is much more fun for the actor. You don't have to think too much. You think you are the important one. It is all about yourself. It is selfish."

Mostly, though, "The Mummy" was an opportunity to work with his friend Cohen, who got his own start producing "Mahogany" with Diana Ross and Billie Dee Williams back in 1975, when the Harvard grad was a 20-something top executive with Motown's motion-picture division. Li calls Cohen "American outside but Chinese inside," a comment that almost brings Cohen to tears when he is told of it. Cohen shows off a bracelet of fat blue amber prayer beads and proudly notes Li gave it to him from his own private collection.

Of Li, Cohen says, "He's like a brother in my mind, my heart." Of getting him to co-star in his movie, after another project had fallen through, he adds, "I called and said, 'This is one of the great villains of all time, in my opinion, because he has all the historical credibility of a dictator and conqueror and then takes on magical proportions. It's just a great part.' He said, 'Who would I be?' I said, 'You'd be the mummy.' He said, 'I'd be the mummy? Then I'll do it. I don't have to wait for a script.' "

The story follows explorer Rick O'Connell (Fraser) and his wife Evelyn (Maria Bello, in the role originated by Rachel Weisz), whose college-age son unearths the cursed emperor's tomb. Trouble ensues, along with one special effect after another. (Though that's really Li's hand on fire - some sort of special coating jelly.) All told, Cohen says, the movie includes 1,000 visual effects - more than any of his other movies.

"You get to a point where you say it's a sequel, but it's not just a sequel and I can give it some new life and it can give me the things that sequels give you: Bigger budgets and greater marketing plans and in the minds of the audience an already established presence," says Cohen, who has been up and down and now, he hopes, up again.

"These are very big things to a director in a business today where one failure can be the end of your career," he continues, on a stunningly honest roll for someone with a big studio movie to sell and triplet babies to support. "I mean I had my two films - 'Fast and Furious' and 'xXx' - that accumulated more than a billion dollars in revenue and then 'Stealth' came along and the phone stopped ringing. Friends who pretended to be friends disappeared. Producers who were supposed to be friends disappeared. . . . It's a hard, bitter lesson that no amount of past success will excuse current failure."

And then, he brings it back to his latest movie: "This is the chance I've been waiting for, to make the movie that's been percolating in my heart since 'Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story,' " which he directed in 1993. And the subject of martial arts, of course, brings it back to Jet Li, a repeated world champion in his time. Li himself says he can't imagine being asked to make a US movie where he didn't have to fight. It's another story in China and Hong Kong, where he has gotten to play a far wider range of roles. On his home turf, he is a superstar for all ages.

Says Li, tugging at his choppy black hair, "Of course I grew up there, my career is years and years there, so everybody, three generations, knows me."

Although he's not quitting movies, Li says he doesn't feel the same urge to make them anymore, not since the tsunami and not since he finished the 2006 film titled "Fearless" in English. It tells the story of Chinese martial arts master Huo Yuanjia, and Li says everything he knows about martial arts and the real enemies of daily life is up there on the screen.

"After the movie, I say I am not taking very seriously doing the movie business anymore," Li says. "And then I totally change to philanthropy. I went around the world to learn. I need to do the real work, not just the public thing. Most of my life is for that now."