MAGGIE Q looks great when she gets angry. That flawless complexion is flushed pink, her eyes are fiery and her knuckles pale as she clutches the edge of the table. Maybe she can act, I think.
'If I'm awful, then that's ok, say I'm awful. But give me a chance to show what I can do. The worse the press thinks of me, the harder I work,' she says.
Watching her slump back into her chair, the feisty Maggie Q (real name Maggie Quigley) momentarily looks forlorn and it is easy to feel a wave of sympathy for the 23-year-old. The press have been on her case since it was announced she would star in All Hallows' Eve.
This is no amateur production. The play is written and directed by David Pinner, associate professor of Drama at Colgate University and a visiting lecturer at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts. And the cast is seriously high-brow, the types that spend most of their time spouting Shakespeare.
But Maggie Q hasn't come the Shakespeare route. She took the drop-out-of-college-and-model road instead. Growing up in Hawaii, her big love was running and in 1997 she won an athletic scholarship to a private Catholic University. After a couple of terms she found herself short of cash, so she took a break to try modelling in Taiwan. When that didn't work out she tried Hong Kong - and has been based here since.
Her lucky break was a photo shoot with Nicholas Tse Ting-fung. It turned her into an 'It' girl overnight and since then she has been a regular on the society pages. She has not had a bad run with the local press, but today she is not as appreciative.
'People in this town just love to be negative. They create an opinion before they've seen anything,' she says.