AsianConnections Team member Suzanne Kai recently chatted with superstar Chow Yun-Fat in Beverly Hills during the premiere of his latest film, Anna and the King. Chow talked about his film roles, and about the person who has inspired him most in his life.

Chow was charming and engaging, revealing more of the human being behind his "superstar status." He talked of his tough childhood and moral values in today's fast changing society. The conversation is filled with laughter as you can read and hear from the following interview highlights and audio clips:

Chow Yun-Fat comments on his name:  You can call me Puppy Chow.  [laughter]  Chow is my surname.  Yun-Fat is my given name.  Some people call me Mr. Fat. Interesting. Or maybe you can call

Photo: Andrew Cooper -
20th Century Fox

me "Fatty" [laughter] 

AsianConnections:  You just flew in from China to California?

Chow Yun-Fat:   I just finished a new movie in Beijing.  It is another Ching Dynasty epic movie, involving a lot of martial arts, sword fighting, and romance.  It is called Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, directed by Ang Lee.

AsianConnections:  First off, I want to mention that your role is historical, in that you are probably one of the first, if not the first Asian male to play a starring romantic role in a major American movie.

Chow Yun-Fat:  No, no, no.  John Lone, The Last Emperor .  Oh, another guy is [the late] Haing Ngor.  He did The Killing Fields.  It's a very heavy drama role.  I like it.

AsianConnections:  How do you feel about doing dramatic versus action roles?

Chow Yun-Fat:  Of course, holding a girl [is] better than holding a gun!  [laughs] 

Plus this movie, I got tons and tons of concubines, wives, and kids.  But you can see a lot of action movies that I've done before, even though I still have two bags of uzis and colt 45's, [it's] very heavy, and every time you have to push your finger to open fire, so tiring!  But if you have tons of girls, you just sit there, somebody do[es] a massage for you, serving you food and water.  It's totally a different story. 

AsianConnections: Your choice of role in Anna and the King is a fantastic role for an Asian male actor.  Most of the Asian male roles have been somewhat stereotypical.  But this is the first "whole person"�what are your thoughts on that?

Chow Yun-Fat: Yes, yes, very interesting.  And very exciting and very challenging.  I think it's good that more American people [can] see the different faces of Yun-Fat.  Not just like�only he can do action.  Actually, if you go back to the early 80's I did a lot of TV series which is very popular in Hong Kong. They are romance.  Like now, in this movie give[s] Yun-Fat one more try,  to go back to the old days, to do the drama again, to do the romance again.  For the first time in 1986, I made with John Woo, A Better Tomorrow, and [then] sudden[ly], I become an action hero, because before that I am still a roman[tic], comedy actor. 

  AsianConnections:  Can you tell us about working with

Photo: Andrew Cooper -
20th Century Fox

Jodie Foster?

Chow Yun-Fat:  She's very talented, she's very professional. She's got tons and tons of patience.  The lady's no sweat.  Even under the heat [35 C/90 F], very hot sun, very humid weather, she never sweat.  She's just cool and calm.  I'm lucky that I have such kind of opportunity to work with her.  She's adorable.  Sometimes can be playful and funny.

AsianConnections:  Jodie says very complimentary things about you as well.  She mentions your "inner stillness."

Chow Yun-Fat:  Because I paid her.  [laughter]

AsianConnections:  Who is the most inspirational person to you?

Chow Yun-Fat:   I think my mother.  She is a very tough lady.  And she taught me how to survive, because we grew up in a very poor, bad situation.  When I was young, I had to carry two baskets to selling our dim sum from village to village, from mountain to mountain.  So I have a very good experience with her as a partnership.  She was my role model when I was young, how hard she worked, working so hard in such very bad situation, and everyday working and living in agony.  Because my father was a seaman, so every year he just come back about three weeks, and then he'd be gone.  So almost a single lady, have four kids in our family, and she put a lot of time to just for living.  So she is a very optimistic lady, even though no matter what the situation, she still stands very firm.  Very stiff, and very straight.  She never bowed to her environment.  So she is one of the heroes in my life when I was young.

First when I was in high school, I had a lot of movie idols, like John Wayne, Steve McQueen, James Dean, and Marlon Brando.  Especially, I don't know why in the old days we had a lot of good top guys in movies like Cagney and Clint Eastwood.

AsianConnections:  How do you feel about being called the "Clark Gable" of Asian actors?

Chow Yun-Fat:  Overwhelming.  Too much for me.

AsianConnections:  What do think about men being emasculated now in the late 20th century?

Chow Yun-Fat:  Now, I can sense that even in Hong Kong, a lot of younger actors, they lost their strength to struggle, [they are] more aggressive in the luxury way.  You know, "I want this, this, this."  But in the old days, you can see especially after World War II, everybody was living in a very a calm situation, the whole country wanted to build up a society.  Everybody worked in a very peaceful harmony.  Now, after the economy boom in the eighties and nineties, now to the year 2000, everybody's?now you can see a lot of material things in the market.  Because for the young generation, they cannot afford it, [to] buy all the stuff in front of them, and now the pacing of life is going very fast, all over the world.  Maybe they have lost the security, because there are too many violent things going on.  Especially in modern days, the parents must go out to work and leave the children at home just only watching TV, so they don't have a guideline to what is life.  In the old days you can see the parents always take the kid, [and] taught them how to be a good man.  Now everything is the TV as a media to guide them and as a baby-sitter.

  AsianConnections:  The values are superficial?

 Chow Yun-Fat:  Yes, yes.  So you can see that no matter where, in the United States, Europe or Asia, the second generation can be very aggressive.  [The second generation say], "I want to be rich, I might as well have a lot of money.  [They say] "When I have money I have power."

 

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