Chan's big break

LET'S do Superman, suggests Jordan Chan Siu-chun to the photographer, as he sprints towards a nearby phone booth and strikes a pose. The photographer smiles. As recognition dawns on a group of passers-by, they point at him and break into giggles.

People laugh at Chan all the time, but the 27-year-old - currently appearing in Happy Hour - does not mind in the least, because he is having the last laugh. With only two films to his name at the time, the dancer-turned-singer-turned-actor received four nominations for the 14th Hong Kong Film Awards to be announced on Sunday, two each for Best Supporting Actor and Best Newcomer (Twentysomething and He's A Woman, She's A Man ).

Not too bad for a guy who considers himself 'not good-looking' and 'unable to act well'. Since he pranced on to the TVB dancers' training class auditions eight years ago, the public housing estate boy has seen his wildest dreams come true.

'I left school to start work rather early because I was not interested in studying,' he said. 'All I knew then was that I liked to spend my time down in the discos, dancing the night away. So when I heard of the TVB auditions, I thought, 'why not?'.' He got in with little difficulty but only lasted a little more than a month. 'There was just no money to be made, and I was the breadwinner of the family,' he said. 'I could not afford to indulge in that.' But still he managed to get in with the right dance crowd and was soon a regular on the concert stages of top Canto-pop singers such as Alan Tam Wing-lun, Anita Mui Yim-fong, Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing and Roman Tam. Chan gave it up when image director Clarence Hui Yuen approached him to be among Tam's backup dancers.

This time Chan stuck it out for a year before again calling it quits to go back to his freelance dancing. 'The job was too binding,' he said. 'We could not take on freelance jobs but we weren't paid monthly salaries, so it was difficult to survive.' But the association with Hui paid off about two years ago when Hui once again approached Chan with an idea: he wanted to start a new trio of singing, dancing young men, to rival Grasshopper.

And so, Chan became 'Wind' of Wind Fire Sea. Compared with his new partners, Jason Chu and Michael Tse, Chan was at best described as ordinary when it came to looks. But there was a quality - a down-to-earth, boy-next-door impression - that attracted. No one was more surprised than he when the United Filmmakers' Organisation (UFO) approached him with a role in Twentysomething.