Chinese actress Li Bingbing has revealed there was a point where she thought she was going to die on the New Zealand set of Hollywood blockbuster The Meg.

The 45-year-old, who stars opposite Jason Statham in the sci-fi action-horror, told reporters at a Shanghai press conference for the movie earlier this month that her long-held fear of water almost had a deadly consequence.

"One of my scenes required me to be put in a cage five or six metres underwater, and I had to hold my breath for a very long time. We had to reshoot the scene again and again and I felt like I was going to die."

At one point, she said she told the director, Jon Turteltaub, that she wouldn't be able to go on much longer, but instead of giving her a break, he asked her to hold her breath for 15 more seconds. "When they took me out of the water, the director came to compliment me, but I was too weak to speak, then he started to fear that I was really close to death."

Pascal Le Segretain

Li Bingbing has told reporters in Shanghai how she feared for her life at one point while shooting The Meg.

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Bingbing, whose previous roles have included battling the undead in Resident Evil: Retribution and robots in Transformers: Age of Extinction, also told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview how the New Zealand landscape helped her through her fear of water and troubles with learning her lines.  

"It's so green and beautiful there. Going for a walk or looking at all of that green made me relax and forget my troubles." 

Hollywood actor star Jason Statham says The Meg was probably the most challenging film he has ever worked on.

Her co-star Statham told reporters in Shanghai that The Meg was probably the most challenging film he had ever worked on. The Fast and Furious and Transporter franchise star said it  was very hard to communicate when shooting underwater scenes because they required a lot physical strength, endurance, and patience. "Everything, from camera adjustment to lighting, is totally different from how we shoot scenes on land."

Also starring Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose and Cliff Curtis, the US$150m movie sees them battling a a 75-foot-long prehistoric shark (or megalodon) thought to be long dead.

It was first major motion picture to be filmed on Auckland's Hauraki Gulf, as well as at the city's Kumeu Film Studios, with the New Zealand leg of the production taking place in the last few months of 2016, before shifting to China.

The Meg is scheduled to hit Kiwi cinemas on August 16.

 - Stuff