actors-from-hong-kong

"I have a child of my own. If kids see me lying around doing nothing, they might wonder when they can be like me. This will set a bad example."

"But I just want to let you know that my daughter and I have zero barriers. We have perfect communication! My father, though, was a firefighter. There was zero communication with us. He believed that you just grow up. Do you need nourishment or culture? No, you will grow up as is."

"I always say that all problems happen due to miscommunication between people. That's the birthplace."

"As long as you have learned to enjoy your life, and you’re happy with both the effort you made and the reward you receive over that period, that’s good enough."

"In the past, I think I may have earned 70-something marks for my efforts but recently that has gone up to 80-something. Before, the most important things to me were fame and fortune, and security."

"You can say I am investing in myself. I want to produce the best films and the best concerts for my audience, to win their respect for me. I want my supporters to be proud of my performance. I may receive less, but getting people’s respect is a high return."

"Money is not my priority. In fact, I think I am the lowest-paid artist in the city because I am willing to give up part of my payment to pay for production costs."

"Acting and singing are ways to communicate with those who grew up with me. I could not abandon my supporters just because I have earned enough money to quit."

"I decided to go into show business because I liked drama and wrote a screenplay when I was in Form Two or Form Three. Initially, I aimed to be a director, but my teacher classified me as an actor, so he chose the career for me."

"I don’t have a problem with money as I spend less than I earn."

"I don’t mind being so busy. Because I’m in both careers, acting and singing, it takes a lot of my time. I do prefer singing over acting, but really I love to do both."

"I think time has a great effect on the quality of your work. You can do 100 things and get 80 marks for your effort. If you want to get 100 marks, then maybe you won’t even be able to do 10 projects in a year."

"I’m a very lucky guy. Not a lot of people can have their lives so much in tandem with the changes around us. I have the ability and I work hard, but the same goes for a lot of other people. It’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time."

"I’ve done more than 100 movies, but I have to ask myself how many of those did I really like and how many did I do for the money? I don’t need to do it for the money any more so now I want to do the kinds of films that make me happy and that can help the industry as well."

"Other than knowing how to act, I have also learnt to be a better human being. I always wanted people to say I was a good actor or a good singer. When they did, I would always feel secretly proud of myself. That feeling is gone now."

"I’m ready for Hollywood, as long as Hollywood is ready for me."

"If I get an award, it is wonderful, but if I don’t, it’s okay because I know how much effort I have put into something. That’s what you need to do every time you start any work – you need to make sure you do your very best and just be yourself. That’s more important."

"I’m accustomed to being hardworking. It’s misleading to say I’m a model worker, but I guess it’s good to encourage young people."

"If I'm not working, I'll go on my boat and have a few drinks. Most of my friends are outside the movie business. It's too much to mix with other celebrities. When I go out I prefer no one talk about movies. I'd rather talk about waterskiing, the sea, beaches, seafood..."

"I have many more choices on the character I can play (in Hong Kong). The role for Asian actors and actresses is very restrictive in Hollywood movies. They already have a lot of great actors and actresses, I have no idea why they need to write scripts for Chinese actors. I will have more space in Asia and I know my culture very well. I know everybody might have his reason for going to Hollywood; you want to be more famous, you want to make more money. You might have your reason, but I can’t find a reason for myself to go to Hollywood."

"I think it’s incredible and I think I had a breakthrough in my acting career. I did something that I had never done before and to me, at least, it was quite successful."

"I don’t want to become more famous because I don’t have any privacy anymore and I hate that very much. Outside of work I just want to be an ordinary person, not to be recognised, not a monkey on the street when everybody is looking at you."

"I think moviemakers in every country are looking for ideas. It’s interactive. And sometimes we remake a lot of Hollywood films but we don’t buy the rights, we just try to imitate those films."

"For me, when I was a kid, I came from a broken family. I don't know how to express my feelings. I don't want to express my feelings in front of others, so I became very isolated. I don't talk too much, and I'm very good at hiding my emotions. And somehow when I get into the training class, when I learn how to act, then I find a way to express my feelings in front of others without being shy. Because you can hide behind someone, and express you feelings. You can do whatever you want, you can cry, but you won't feel shy. And that's the reason why I enjoy acting very much. That's the reason why I've been acting for twenty-something years. I don't do it for fame or for money. That's not important to me. For myself it's a kind of relief that you have to suppress for 13 years in your childhood."

"Many times, I finished and asked my scene partner, 'Did you notice just now that one of my eyes was blank? Actually, I was thinking, what's my line?'"

"I had been making dramas for some time and suddenly I wanted to change, I wanted to have new feelings."

"Once I'm committed to a role, I will go very deep into it, even when I'm not at work. I'll keep on studying the script, maybe 40 or 50 times. I might call a scriptwriter at three in the morning to say I've thought of something new."

"I wasn't so happy in my childhood. My parents broke up when I was six. Before, I was a very active, naughty child, but after my father left me I stopped talking. I became very good at hiding my emotions. I felt so ashamed of telling others that I didn't have a father, because that was not common in the 1960s. People didn't break up - even if they didn't love each other - in traditional Chinese families. Not like today."

"I found a way to express myself. The others thought I was playing a character, but actually I was living behind the character. I could release my emotions, and the others didn't know that was me. That's the reason I love acting so much. I wasn't asking for fame or money - it was the natural high I got addicted to."

"If I want to experience the life of an ordinary person, I cannot do it in Asia."

"Carefully. I think particularly for actors of color, we have an added responsibility. I think under normal circumstances, if the playing field was equal, then you just do. You do whatever comes your way and you do the best job you can. For us, it’s a little bit different, I think. I think we need to exercise and develop our sense of good taste. I think we need to see characters that are three- dimensional because Hollywood has not done such a good job in the past on how to represent us. So we need to untie a lot of those expectations that are something that is not exactly representative of who we are. So that is something that we need to be cognitive of."

"We have to continue to tell our stories. And if we change one mind, it’s one mind that we changed and I’m happy with that."

"What I appreciate the most my job is working with so many talented people with a single focus to make the best film or TV show possible."

"I hope the quantities go up. Right now, there's still very few in my mind. I think that since Asian America is a multicultural, multi-ethnic society, we need as many voices that we can get out there to represent all of us. Because we cannot speak for everyone, we need more voices. We need diverse voices, we need mixes; we need many more diversity in the same screen. All of these things are things that are on the agenda, and I'm ticking them off one by one. That's how it goes."

"I’ve studied martial arts for a long time. I started when I was eight years old, so I’m not unfamiliar. I’ve done fights before on other shows. You’ve seen me probably, if you’ve seen other shows that I’ve done in film and television, I’ve had my chance for some action. But the young ones are good, let them take over. They can carry the heavy weight. I’ll be happy to do the talking by now."

"Focus on the work because, personally, that brings me through the toughest day — that I’m focusing on the work at hand instead of [all] of these things that are bombarding me. The chatter in your mind is strong. So, you need to be stronger."

"I don't have an English sense of humor. In my language, I have tons of it. In English, you have to really get the slang, and the culture."

"…You know I’ve done everything before right? Horror movies, action movies… I want to try a movie just for the sex scenes, not the fighting! I’ve never had a chance to hold a girl and kiss her. Everyone tells me I should fight again, but actually I want to try everything. Now I just want to find new, young action stars…"

"…It is not about who is doing what, the matter is that all of us are doing it. We have all started this path. This path is for long term development. We want to create a cradle of new talents. In the long run it’s a very strategic decision to train new talents, to create new opportunity’s for the future of the movie industry, especially for the martial arts genre. There are schools everywhere, everybody is learning something, and it’s important for the future that’s what matters."

"…To portray a realistic older person, for me it’s actually getting harder. The film is very much about people of my age group, and all the troubles that come with it. I really value my time and spending it with senior people, I was practically brought up by my own grandfather."

"…Almost half my life I’ve worked in the movie industry, and it’s very rare to see a good, strong script. I really love movie making, editing and directing, however if you want me to count it then there’s only really handful, about 5 movies that I consider to have had good scripts that I’ve been involved in. So if I see a very good script and I wasn’t involved, then I feel it’s a pity I wasn’t involved in that collaboration. So if there’s a good script then it’s good to be involved, but if nobody invites you then it’s very hard, those sorts of opportunities are rare to come by."

"I'm jealous that you are CCP [Communist Party of China] members. The CCP is really great. The CCP's promises don't take 100 years, they are fulfilled in decades. I want to be a CCP member."

"More than 120 takes. Those kinds of things ... You [say] "Wow, Jackie's good." It's not good. You can do it. Except, do you have the patience or not?"

"...in the 10 years after Hong Kong's return to Chinese rule ... I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not... If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic... I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."

"I feel the pride of being a Chinese everywhere, the Five-starred Red Flag is respected worldwide."