NEW YORK -- China Chow is making a big hit in The Big Hit as a neophyte actress with sex appeal and as fodder for the gossip columns because of her co-star Mark Wahlberg.

Chow, the 24-year-old London-born daughter of Michael Chow, of Mr. Chow restaurant fame, may or may not be dating Wahlberg. Neither of them will say, although they have been seen together in Toronto, where The Big Hit was filmed last year, and in New York, where it made its world premiere.

"I don't want to talk about that," she says, giggling like the kidnapped schoolgirl she plays in The Big Hit, an action-packed send-up of kung fu and hit-man movies.

"But I'll tell you one thing, the hard thing was acting like I didn't like getting kidnapped by the four of them!"

She's talking about Wahlberg and co-stars Lou Diamond Phillips, Bokeem Woodbine and Antonio Sabato Jr. These young guns have propelled The Big Hit into the number one box office hit of the current week.

Arriving on set last July, Chow already had a boyfriend, she admits. He was hanging out in Hawaii waiting for her. Fresh from graduating in psychology from Scripps College and invited to audition in Toronto for The Big Hit -- although she had never acted before -- Chow showed up on a day trip. Director Che-Kirk Wong gave her the part on the spot and asked her to stay for three-and-a-half months. Chow was shocked.

"I just went in on it really to see what it would be like to audition and not to get the part. There was no way I really thought that was even a possibility. It just kind of happened. And lucky me!"

Chow quickly lost her boyfriend, who was asked not to show up. "Because I didn't want him to," Chow says. "I didn't want to be distracted. I kind of wanted to be in Toronto and didn't want anyone around I could cling to." She may have clung to Wahlberg, who, by coincidence, is back in Toronto now shooting another film, The Corruptor with Chow Yun-Fat.

Wahlberg teases on the issue. "We're friends," he says with a smile. "We're friends," he repeats. "I like her very much. I don't know how much she likes me. I ask her out but she doesn't want to go out with me. I'm not good at rejection!"

Chow is high strung but under control. She knows it's dangerous to provide too much too quickly for a voracious media. She has been involved in the fame game in terms of family connections. Her mother, fashion trendsetter Tina Chow, was one of the first prominent women to die of AIDS. Her aunt Adele is married to musician David Byrne of Talking Heads.

"It makes me very wary of doing interviews," Chow says of her family experience. "I'll talk about the movie until I'm blue in the face but my private life I'm so protective of!"

The Big Hit has given Chow -- who has dabbled in modelling but is not serious about it -- an interest in acting, so she is taking voice lessons in Los Angeles. She is training in a gym with a pro. She is going to a therapist "to help me deal with all of this."

The kicker, one that shows that Chow is maintaining her sense of humor, is that all this self-help stuff is related to The Big Hit and has her a bit discombobulated.

"This all started -- the voice coach, the trainer, the therapist -- since the movie," she says, with a rueful tone. Success ain't easy. Even when you're in a big hit.