Despite this initial filmic success, the mid-Eighties proved a difficult time for Jet Li. His directorial debut, Born To Defend was a failure and his other pictures were fairly unsophisticated efforts. Furthermore, his marriage to Huang Qui-Yan, a fellow member of the Beijing Wushu team who bore him two daughters, fell apart. Rumours flew that a third party had been involved, and Jet was said to be involved with buxom actress Nina Li Chi, his co-star in the San Francisco-set romp Dragon Fight. Nina had been Miss Asia Pacific in 1986, and later starred as a sexy spook in A Chinese Ghost Story 3, as a nubile menaced by a 7-foot Komodo dragon in Stone Age Warriors, as an evil witch in A Kid From Tibet and as a very confused girlfriend in Jackie Chan's Twin Dragons (a parody of Jean-Claude Van Damme's Double Impact). She would retire from movies in 1992 then, having reportedly lost $10 million in property deals, would reappear in 1999, as Jet Li's new wife. The couple had clearly enjoyed a long relationship but, perhaps due to Jet not wishing to taint his heroic reputation, had seldom been seen together.