South China Morning Post

Yeoh's Year

As her new film, Silver Hawk, opens around Asia, the star of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Touch reflects on a traumatic 12 months that took in Sars and ended with the death of her friend Anita Mui Yim-fong.

by Matthew Scott
January 25, 2004

FAME HAS A funny effect on our perceptions of people. Once we place them on that pedestal, it seems we also expect them to be above human frailty. Look at our shock when famous couples split, or our horror when a star is caught doing something wrong.

I am talking to actress Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng because she is doing the rounds promoting her latest film, Silver Hawk. To save time as she prepares to follow the film across Asia - from Hong Kong to Beijing, to Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur, Penang and beyond - we meet halfway through a hair and make-up session at Central's Triple Edge salon.

The place is buzzing when I enter around midday - stylists darting in and out of corridors, wet-haired women making their way from basin to basin - and I am shown to a quiet room towards the back. After waiting for about 15 minutes, the 41-year-old, Malaysian-born actress breezes into the room. She is halfway through her session, and waiting for another stylist to come in to fix her fringe.

I say that we are here to talk about Silver Hawk, but recent circumstances mean other topics can't be avoided. Yeoh is one of the many in Hong Kong still grieving the loss of Anita Mui Yim-fong to cancer. The two had been close for years and Yeoh was among the many friends who rushed to Mui's bedside when her condition took a turn for the worse on December 29.

For all the grieving Yeoh has been through in the past few weeks, she looks immaculate. We begin our interview establishing a friendly banter, talking about her latest project and her plans, but when the conversation turns towards Mui, the actress immediately - and quite visibly - steels herself, as though she knew the moment might arise, and had been dreading it since she walked into the room. Her eyes drift away from me, she reaches out for her glass of water and lights up a cigarette. She looks across and apologies, while the tears well in her eyes. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "It's just too soon."

Her reaction comes as a surprise but it shouldn't. And that's when I start thinking about famous people and how we expect them to act. The thing is, we should also know there are some emotions that even the best actors can't hide.

When Yeoh recovers her composure, she looks back - like a lot of people here - on a year she'd rather forget. "It was one of the worst years for so many people, she says. "We lost a lot of great talent, some great friends." Like many, she mentions Mui's courage in the face of her disease, her desire to continue to be seen and heard by the public throughout her fight and of her last message to her fans - "Don't cry for me. Don't say my name. Let me go on my journey in peace."

"While we were shooting Silver Hawk, Anita was there in Beijing to visit us, she was there in Shanghai to visit us, and she even came to Japan to visit us," says Yeoh. "She was never someone who would retreat from anything. She was such a go-forward type of character and she was always like that. Being a Buddhist can help sometimes, because we know it was their time to go, that they are off to a better place. But sometimes it's hard. We should be thankful for having known her."

Yeoh's Silver Hawk was filmed last April, as Sars swept all other news off our front pages. Its working title, The Masked Crusader, was changed after the majority of Hong Kong's population started wearing masks. On set in China about a third of the crew was from Hong Kong, worried about their own health and security - and about what was going on at home.

"It was such an awful year for Hong Kong. So traumatic," she says. "We were filming in China with a crew of about 100 people from Hong Kong, so it was just a really stressful time. We were not sure whether or not we'd be shut down at any moment, and everyone was so worried about their families back home. But everybody knew the best thing we could do would be not to panic."

Silver Hawk is a departure for Yeoh, a lighter shade of the action genre that has been her staple for years. It's certainly a far cry from her work in the Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). In it, she plays a comic-strip-style superhero - mild-mannered business woman by day, masked-crime fighter by night. She's the first to admit it won't be winning any Oscars - and that films such as that were never really meant to either.

"With [director] Jingle Ma, we knew what we wanted for this project. It's just simple, fun action - a total popcorn film. For one-and-a-half hours, you don't have to think about anything."

It is the second co-production for Yeoh's Mythical Films and partner Thomas Chung Choi-sze's Han Entertainment - following on from 2002's The Touch. "Thomas and I know there are certain genres we want to do," says Yeoh. "And the bottom line is that the director is the soul of the film. As producers, we can influence where the budget goes, but only the director really controls what tone, what type of movie you are trying to make. Thomas especially had been trying to court Jingle for a long time - since just after his first film. He is quite brilliant at this genre, with high action and a comedy element. His action is always dynamic - it jumps at you. Between Jingle and Thomas, they wanted me to do something different."

The basic idea, she says, was to allow her some freedom, and to surround her with an attractive cast (which includes Richie Ren, Li Bingbing and Luke Goss). "Crouching Tiger, of course, was a very dramatic role for me, and the fighting was very serious. Even with The Touch there was bit more of the serious about it. It was embroiled in the love story and all that. But this one is just a good time," she says.

"Usually with me it is more serious when it comes to the action - I don't smile. And while this is not an over-the-top comedic film - as I don't think I am cut out to be that sort of actor - with this one I had much more fun, and the action is a lot larger than life. I am always more serious, so it was nice to let my hair down."

With films such as Silver Hawk and The Touch, Yeoh recognised she has a certain audience in the palm of her hand. There is always a market here in Asia for action films. It is, after all, the genre on which the Hong Kong film industry has been built. And, Yeoh says, it's the one thing we can truly call our own.

"We here in Hong Kong really have to play to our strengths when it comes to action," she says. "We can't compete with Hollywood. We just don't have the budgets or the CGI [computer-generated imaging]. Our strength really is with the live action. Nobody does it better than us. So much action has been done, so the challenge is always to make it new and interesting. That is the toughest challenge.

"Of course, with us being allowed more access to the mainland, it opens up such an enormous amount of possibilities for Hong Kong filmmakers. There are so many incredible locations. I mean, we can never go to Europe and make a film look European. We shouldn't even try. It always looks like you are a tourist. So we should make the most of what we are being given."

Yeoh has big plans for what she hopes will be her next project - a version of the fabled Mulan story, about the Chinese warrior princess. Peter Pau Tak-hei, with whom she worked on Crouching Tiger, has been earmarked for director with a budget expected to be in the region of US$30 million. It is a story that is close to Yeoh's heart - and, she says, perhaps the biggest challenge of her career. "Hopefully we will finally get around to it this year," she says. "It's such a big project and we have so much to think about. We will have to film in all kinds of weather, all over China, so we have to make sure everything is just right for the crew, especially.

"For an actress everything is always fine - you are looked after, you have your trailer and everything provided. But the crew are the ones out there in the wilds all the time, hours before and after us. So the pre-planning for this has to be perfect.

"As an actress this story encompasses all the things I want to do, but as a story it also encompasses the very essence of what it means to be Chinese: the love of your country, of your parents, of true love - how do you find it and keep it. And for it also to have that action side, it really is everything to me."

The commotion at our door suggests the stylist is now at hand - and it's time for Yeoh's fringe to get some attention. She wipes her eyes gently one last time and smiles. "You know, after the year everyone has just been through, I think we have all learned a few important things. We have to continue to live our lives, to adjust and to learn from what we have gone through. And I think the great thing about this town is that everyone realises this."

Silver Hawk is screening now.