Cosmetic villain
Mention the name Sek Kin and Hong Kong's cinema aficionados inevitably recall monochrome images of a menacing villain in period Chinese costumes battling it out with martial-arts hero Wong Fei-hung. Readers more familiar with post-war Chinese cinema, meanwhile, might be able to conjure a slightly more varied picture - mostly of a moustached, rigorous patriarch standing fast to draconian traditional values, or of larger-than-life figures in classic wuxia (martial arts) films.
It is a shock, therefore, to discover that this on-screen embodiment of masculinity is an avid reader of Max Factor catalogues. Back before his thespian heyday in the 1950s to the 70s, Sek joined the glittering world of film wielding a makeup brush, not a sword. '[Max Factor] gave me a few books about makeup to read,' he revealed in an interview given as part of the Hong Kong Film Archive's ongoing oral history project in 1997.
Sek had been thrust into the job on short notice - he was asked to stand in for actor Sit Kwok-sin's makeup artist one day in the late 1930s and he began applying rouge there and then. His cosmetic career was ended within weeks by the looming Japanese invasion.
This anecdote suggests there is more lurking behind Sek's archetypal on-screen persona than meets the eye. Despite the fact that his name is synonymous with deviousness - made legendary by the Cantonese put-down of being 'craftier than gaan yan Kin [crafty Kin]' - the actor, now 93, prides himself on a career of mesmerising diversity. Besides playing baddies and daddies, Sek has also shone as a mobster's struggling aide-de-camp (in Peter Yung Wai-chuen's gritty New Wave gem The System, above) and even in comedy, as a bizarre spirit clad completely in white (A Friend from Inner Space).
And of course, he's among the very few Hong Kong actors who can claim a fanbase in America, after his starring role as Bruce Lee's nemesis in Enter the Dragon.
What endears Sek to those who know him, however, is his gentle nature.
'He's very nice, a kind-hearted elder, someone who's completely unlike the villains he played in his films,' says Donna Chu Shun-chi, who interviewed Sek extensively for the Film Archive, nine years ago. Chu's report about the meeting reveals Sek to be a humorous and articulate artist who enjoys his work and is eager to discuss it. He is always ready to share hilarious, self-deprecating anecdotes and his views on the performances of fellow actors Charles Laughton, Alec Guinness or Susan Hayward.
Born in 1913, Sek began training in martial arts to bolster his feeble physical constitution - efforts that were put to good use in his career. But it was not until after the second world war that Sek's star began to rise and his big break came with the role of the white-browed monk in Gu Minzhong's films about martial-arts hero Fong Sai-yuk.
Then came the Wong Fei-hung films that pitted him in an on-screen rivalry with Kwan Tak-hing's hero for nearly two decades.
But Sek's defining performance must be his turn as the oppressive patriarch (above) in Lee Sun-fung's adaptation of Ba Jin's Torrent Trilogy, in which his character is forced to hold together a family of schemers and weaklings with moral values well past its sell-by date. This is Sek at his peak, a perfect showcase of the versatility and skills that enlivened Hong Kong cinema in its heyday.
