FROM COREA
HWANG SINE
Films in Udine: Killer Story, Bedroom & Courtroom.
HWANG Sine was born in Seoul, South Korea, on
15 December 1963. (During her career, her name
has also been rendered as Hwang S(h)in-hye,
Hwang S(h)in-hae and Hwang Cine.) She studied at
Inha Technical Junior College, Inchon, to become a
flight attendant but instead, while still at college, started
working in 1983 as a model in commercials and
advertisements. The same year she launched her
career with the popular MBC TV drama Father and
Son, and was soon dubbed "the most perfect face in
Korea." The TV hits First Love (1984) and Days of
Ambition (1984) established her as an actress.
Hwang's film career began in 1987, with Bae
Chang-ho's tearjerker Our Sweet Days of Youth, in
which she played a divorcee who marries her true
love and dies giving birth to their baby. She went on
to star in Gagman (Lee Myung-sei, 1990), as an aimless
teenager; Woman Who Walks on Water (Park
Chul-soo, 1991); the period piece Dreams (Bae
Chang-ho, 1991); Theresa's Lover (1991); and as an
ambitious young performer in Park Chul-soo's Seoul
Evita (1991).
After a short break, she returned to movies with a
more determined approach to acting, starting with
301 302 (Park Chul-soo, 1995), as the bulemic
tenant of Apt. 302 who is cannibalized by her neighbour
in Apt. 301. She has continued to take more
serious roles that undermine her doll-like image with
the Korean public, playing a gynaecologist in Push!
Push! (Park Chul-soo, 1997), an airhead actress in
Killer Story (Yeo Kyun-dong, 1998), and a wife who
sues her husband's company for lack of a sex-life in
Bedroom & Courtroom (Kang Woo-suk, 1998).
Hwang continues to balance careers in modelling
and acting, and recently enjoyed smash successes
with two TV drama series, Lover (1997) and
Cinderella (1998). To date she has appeared in 12
films.
FROM HONG KONG
ADA CHOI
Stars in two films at Udine: The Suspect and Your
Place or Mine!
Ada CHOI (Choi Siu-fan) was born in Hong Kong
on 17 September 1973. Her family is originally from
Teochew (Chaozhou). She was educated at St.
Margaret's Girls' School and is a practising Christian.
Following a route taken by many women to get into
Hong Kong's film and TV industry (such as Maggie
Cheung and Anita Yuen), she entered a beauty
pageant, coming third in the 1991 Miss Hong Kong
contest. (The winner that year was Amy Kwok, now
actress wife of Lau Ching-wan - both guests at Udine
last year!). The following year she joined TVB (organiser
of the Miss Hong Kong contest) as an actress
in serialised dramas, notably The Revelation of the
Last Hero (1992), All about Tin (1992), The Link
(1993, playing a revengeful killer), Shades of
Darkness and The Romance of the White Hair
Maiden (1994). She still continues to work in TV. She
entered the film industry in 1994, and to date has
made almost 20 films - from comedy to drama,
mostly in contemporary settings, but none in the
notorious sex-and-violence Category III. Her films
include: The Golden Girls (Joe Ma, 1995), as an
aspiring film actress in mid-'60s Hong Kong; Love
and Sex among the Ruins (Cheung Chi-sing, 1996),
as a lesbian; Once upon a Time in Triad Society 2
(Cha Chuen-yee, 1996), with Francis Ng; Walk In
(Herman Yau, 1997); Made in Heaven (Alex Cheung,
1997); Rape Trap (Cheng Wai-man, 1998), as a rape
victim; Casino (Billy Tang, 1998), as a Macau triad
boss' wife; The Suspect (Ringo Lam, 1998), as a TV
reporter; Your Place or Mine! (James Yuen, 1998),
as a yuppie executive. Ada Choi is at the forefront of
a pack of new actresses (including Shu Qi, Athena
Chu, Gigi Leung, Carman Lee) who are still relatively
little known outside East Asia but who are forging
careers as a generational change takes place
among Hong Kong cinema's female stars. After establishing
her name in TV, her film career really started
to take off in 1995, initially in lightweight roles but
now in increasingly meaty parts. Her gamine looks (a
broad face, with striking eyes, on a slim frame) equip
her for both tomboyish comedy and serious drama,
as shown in her two films at Udine this year. Locally,
her nickname is "Barbecued Pork Rice" (cha siu fan),
a pun on her Cantonese name. She has about halfa-
dozen websites devoted to her on the Internet.
LAU CHING-WAN
Films in Udine: Expect the Unexpected, A Hero
Never Dies, Too Many Ways To Be No. 1.
LAU Ching-wan was born in Hong Kong on 16
February 1964. In 1983 he attended TV station
RTHK's acting course and the following year started
appearing on TV screens, becoming famous for his
steely cold looks. His first movie role was in John
Chiang's drama Silent Love (1986), but his major
breakthrough was not until 1993 when he co-starred
with Anita Yuen in Derek Yee's C'est La Vie, Mon
Cheri, a major box-office hit, and took the lead role in
Wellson Chin's Thou Shalt Not Swear. He has mostly
avoided costume roles. Lau's hangdog, mature looks
- very different from the usual boyish appeal of many
Hong Kong male stars - have made him suitable for
playing in both ironic comedy and pure drama, and in
recent years he has turned to much darker roles, as
burned-out cops (Benny Chan's Big Bullet, 1996;
Daniel Lee's Black Mask, 1996; Patrick Yau's The
Longest Nite, 1998), tough professionals (a chief
fireman in Johnnie To's Lifeline, 1997) or tragic
everymen (a noodle-stall owner who falls for a female
assassin in Patrick Leung's Beyond Hypothermia,
1997). He has so far made over 55 movies - several
recently for Johnnie To's company, Milkyway Image -
and never seems to stop working; Hollywood agents
are now knocking on his door. In summer 1998, soon
after attending Udine last year, he married TV
actress Amy Kwok.
FRANCIS NG Films in Udine: 9413..., Young and Dangerous:
The Prequel, ...Till Death Do Us Part, Too Many
Ways To Be No. 1, Raped by an Angel 2.
Francis NG (Ng Chan-yu) was born in Hong Kong
on 21 December. His real Chinese name is Ng Chikeung.
He is in his 30s. In 1985 he graduated from
TVB's acting course and immediately started playing
in TV dramas, including Everybody Loves Somebody
and The Family Squad. Though he subsequently
appeared in some movies (including Handsome
Siblings, 1990), it was not until 1992, after two successful
TV comedies, that he started to make an
impression on the big screen, starting with his weirdest
role of all - as the male half of crazed brotherand-
sister Siamese twins in the swordplay fantasy
The Bride with White Hair (Ronny Yu, 1993). Most of
his films since then have played on his aptitude for
young, menacing characters, often rootless triads, as
in the first two films of the Young and Dangerous
series (1995), Cha Chuen-yee's two Once Upon a
Time in Triad Society movies (1996), Ringo Lam's
Full Alert (1996), in which he starred opposite Lau
Ching-wan, and Wai Ka-fai's Too Many Ways To Be
No. 1 (1997), also with Lau. Though this is his popular
image in Hong Kong movies, he has also shown
considerable talent in more comic roles. His four
films on show in Udine this year give a good demonstration
of his range: a street triad in Andrew Lau's
Young and Dangerous: The Prequel, a wise-cracking
lothario in Aman Chang's Raped by an Angel 2, a
respectable lawyer in Daniel Lee's ...Till Death Do Us
Part, and a loose-cannon cop in 9413... The last
movie marks his debut as a director. To date he has
made over 40 films, and also worked in live theatre
(Naughty Couple, 1994-95; Free Man Show, 1998).
ANTHONY WONG
Films in Udine: The Storm Riders, Beastcops, The
Demon's Baby.
Anthony WONG (Wong Chau-sang) was born on 2
September 1961, of Chinese-English parentage. In
1982 he joined TV station RTHK's acting course and
in the space of two years appeared in 25 series. In
1985 he enrolled at the Hong Kong Academy for
Performing Arts to study theatre drama, and on leaving
joined TVB, appearing in a further 30 or so
drama series. Though he did some film work in the
mid-'80s, he only concentrated on movies from 1990,
finally gaining a major name for himself as the lead
in his friend Herman Yau's Category III shocker The
Untold Story (aka Bun Man, 1993), as the Sweeney
Todd-like restaurateur who makes "pork" buns out of
human flesh. Though he is a serious actor who's also
involved in theatre (having recently studied drama in
London) and most recently starred in Ann Hui's
Ordinary People (1999) as an Italian-Chinese priest,
Wong has become Hong Kong's most famous
screen psycho of the '90s, perpetrating every conceivable
type of nastiness on-screen - from cannibalism
(Ebola Syndrome, 1996) to mass murder (Taxi
Hunter, 1993 - reportedly his favourite role) and rape
(Love to Kill, 1993). Less bloody parts include offbeat
cops in Rock n' Roll Cop (Kirk Wong, 1994) and
Beastcops (Gordon Chan/Dante Lam, 1998), as well
as villains in Ringo Lam's Full Contact (1992), John
Woo's Hard-Boiled (1992) and Johnnie To's The
Heroic Trio (1993).
To date he has appeared in almost 70 movies, as
well as directing, writing, and acting in New Tenant
(1995) and Top Banana Club (1996). He has also
sung on two CDs, with his rock band The Gutter.
DONNIE YEN
Film in Udine: Ballistic Kiss.
Donnie YEN (YAN Chi-dan) was born in
Guangzhou (Canton), China, c. 1964 and moved to
Hong Kong when only a few months old. From an
early age he studied martial arts and classical piano.
At the age of nine, his family moved to Boston,
where he became involved with street gangs in
Chinatown collecting money. His mother sent him to
study martial arts in China, where he trained under
Jet Li in Beijing. In the mid-'80s, on the way back to
the U.S. via Hong Kong, he met action director Yuen
Woo-ping (whose sister was one of Yen's ex-students)
who persuaded him to get into movies, first
with the period drama Drunken Tai Chi (1984) and
then with the modern comedy-actioner The
Mismatched Couple (1985). Yen has played in over
25 films to date, several of which he has also worked
on as action co-ordinator, and two of which he has
produced and directed (Legend of the Wolf, 1987;
Ballistic Kiss, 1998). His best-known films, which
have won him a large following worldwide on video,
include Tiger Cage (1988), In the Line of Duty 4
(1989), Tiger Cage 2 (1990), Iron Monkey (1993)
and Wing Chun (1994), all directed by Yuen Wooping;
Dragon Inn (Raymond Lee, 1992); Iron Monkey
2 (Chiu Lo-kong, 1996); and cult horror movie Satan
Returns (Allun Lam, 1996), as a burned-out cop
opposite villain Francis Ng. He battled his former teacher,
Jet Li, in a notable fight sequence in Once
Upon a Time in China II (1992), and also appeared
in the Michelle Yeoh showcase Butterfly & Sword
(Peter Mak, 1993), prior to his re-teaming with Yeoh
in Wing Chun. Yen's characteristic on-screen fighting
style is as taut as wound steel and as fast and explosive
as a bullet, with no wasted energy. His mother,
Bow Sim Mark, is a master of the Tai Chi Chuan and
Pa Kwa Chang fighting styles. His sister, Yen Chiching,
is also a much-decorated martial artist in international
competitions.
125 Stars
Far East Film