James Pax earned a degree in business from New York University and later studied film production/directing at the University of Southern California. He has lived and worked around the globe: Italy, Japan, the United States, Hong Kong, Malaysia, France and China.

His talent as a singer took him to South America during his teens to perform on TV, becoming the first Asian singer to make it in South America. He has received professional training in ballet and Kung Fu. In his early 20s he worked as a model in the U.S. and Europe for top fashion designers like Armani, and was the first Chinese model to appear on a Milan runway in the early 1990s.

Upon his graduation from New York University, he worked for one year on Wall Street as a stock analyst. He then decided to pursue his acting career and moved on to Hollywood, landing roles in Big Trouble in Little China with Kurt Russell, Year of Dragon with John Lone, In Love and War with James Woods, Kinjite with Charles Bronson, and Bethune with Donald Sutherland. He also guest starred in numerous TV shows and appeared as a series regular on Nasty Boys in 1990.

In 1992, he returned to Asia and started acting in the Hong Kong and Japanese movie industries. In his 30s he became the first Chinese model to appear in a cigarette campaign in Europe for Philip Morris and West cigarettes.

James Pax will be making his directorial debut on the new movies A Bowl of Fish, Passion Fruit and Last Tango in Shanghai in 2006. He is also hoping to bring his films to the festivals in Berlin, Cannes, Venice and Sundance in 2006.

His most recent TV work is Shanghai Solution, which aired on CCTV8 in August 2005. A true story based on the 30,000 Jews who fled to China in 1940s, the series was a huge ratings success on Chinese TV.