But his audience don't see the general manager of Becky Agric Bio-energy, a medium-sized enterprise operating in western Guangdong province; to most people, Leo Liu Wai-hung is Ah Chan, the country bumpkin he played in the 1978 TVB series Man in the Net, which cast him, Chow Yun-fat and Dodo Cheng Yu-ling to stardom.

In what was his best-known role - and one he is reported to have parlayed into a massive fortune - Liu depicted the type of person he wants to convert to modernity: an ignoramus from the mainland who sneaked into Hong Kong dreaming of streets paved with gold, only to be victimised by the denizens of a cold, cynical city. With his new job, the 49-year-old has come full circle.

Liu's legacy as Ah Chan - a perjorative term that has entered the lexicon to describe people from the mainland - has helped him build a rapport with the farmers. After all, these are people who, by living within the radar of Hong Kong's popular culture, grow up watching Hong Kong serials, including repeats of Man in the Net. He may wax lyrical about science, but the peasants believe he's one of them, Liu says.

'They see me as a guy who's on their side, someone who wouldn't dupe them and who's there with them, not just for the sake of making a quick buck,' he says.

His skills as a jabbering comedian have been put to great use. 'It serves me well. When I'm in the villages, I engage them by making my turn like a talk show,' he says.

Liu hasn't enjoyed the smoothest of rides since he quit acting to start his own business in 1994. He has rarely been out of the headlines - and mostly for the wrong reasons.

His first venture, selling cosmetics, foundered after a few years, and then the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s left him broken and debt-ridden. Moving to Malaysia, his wife's birthplace, he reinvented himself as a restaurateur, whose string of three Chan Si Fu ('Master Chan') eateries became so successful that he managed to return to Hong Kong a revitalised entrepreneur, opening a shop here in an alliance with a local supermarket chain. His renaissance was short-lived, however, as the eateries closed in 2001, a failure he attributed to over-expansion.

'The lesson I learnt is that you shouldn't do franchises if you don't have enough capital,' he says.

He has no regrets about falling short of his own expectations the second time round. 'I am more than determined to make my name as a businessman,' he says. 'I believe that you rise up at exactly the place where you fell. There's no use trying to escape from the past.'

In 2002, he played to packed houses in a string of stand-up comedy shows - but soon found his true calling in conference rooms and business meetings. A chance meeting with an old media acquaintance brought him into contact with his current employers which led him to the challenge of transforming Guangdong's rice paddies.

His trials during the past decade embodied the never-say-die attitude that local audiences have found so inspiring. However painful it was for him, it's as if he's playing a version of the struggling Joe Bloggs he portrayed throughout his film and television career.

And Liu has no regrets about his misfortunes. 'What brings some people down is when they keep on looking back - they always mutter about how they were so and so in the past, and whine about why they are condemned to their predicaments,' he says. 'My take on life is that you should always cherish what you have now and always look ahead. If you learn how to love what you do, you don't feel trapped or tired.'

Liu describes his optimism when his fortunes dipped. 'At the most difficult time, I didn't even have enough money to pay for my daughter's schooling - so, I just told her she had to stop her studies and work to help out,' he says. 'When things got better, she went back to school. And her results improved a great deal.'

Liu is hardly the joker he played so well in the 80s, when his role as a loud, gaudy female socialite (Mud Tai, or 'Mrs Whoever') left rapturous audiences gasping for breath. Composed and serious, he becomes defensive when the past is brought up, as if he fears being belittled and patronised, much like the character of Ah Chan.

More than a decade after he left TVB, Liu insists he made the right move, and is damning of his onscreen successors. 'The minimum requirement for an actor is the knack for observing things around you,' he says. 'Afterwards, you can draw from your memories to play characters. It's fundamental to the job, but it's also something that a lot of people can't manage these days, because all they want to do is be themselves. So they deliver run-of-the-mill stuff.'

Liu could never be accused of doing that, even if he plays a character that's more akin to his real self than his previous incarnations. In what he says was a returned favour to Andy Lau Tak-wah - who helped him out financially when his restaurant venture folded - Liu signed up to Malaysian director Ho Yu Hang's Rain Dogs, the latest production to emerge from Lau's production company Focus First Cuts.

In the film he plays Gu, a middle-aged man living in a run-down Malaysian fishing village who is suddenly charged with the care of his dejected nephew (played by Malaysian newcomer Kuan Choon Wai), when he arrives on his doorstep after a string of domestic tragedies.

Downcast and alienated, Gu mirrors the internal struggles Liu would have undergone during the worst times in life.

Liu says the plaudits he received for Rain Dogs - an entry to the sidebar competition at this year's Venice Film Festival - would not affect his decision to treat acting as a hobby. Liu, who had to miss Venice because he couldn't get time off from his duties on the mainland, says his own life has been like a melodrama.

'I always thought that I was making my own television serial with my life ... I'm just waiting to see whether I will arrive at a happy ending,' he says.

Liu laughs when asked if it might be better if it weren't such a roller-coaster ride. 'That wouldn't be good to watch, would it?' he says.

Rain Dogs opens tomorrow