"Part of the reason he accepted the gig, though, was to shine a spotlight on an ugly period in history. "You have to let it in, but then you have to breathe it out again," he said, exhaling loudly. "So it doesn't destroy you." It was a much different experience than the three-week whirlwind he experienced in the country as a 13-year-old filming Steven Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun." Now there he was, the veteran in an inexperienced cast of real Nanjing students that legendary director Zhang Yimou had recruited."