Fame is that most fickle of beasts. On one hand there is modern society's fixation with it: the elevation of 'stars' to the dizzying heights of deities, coupled with the public's willingness to court it to the point of exhaustion, opening themselves up to the rash of reality shows that plague our television screens.
On the other hand there is the effect it has on the people it is bestowed upon: the intrusions; the flashbulbs blazing at every street corner; the pressure generated by daily prying into the lives of anyone who wanders into the fringes of the public eye. Our desires are insatiable. We want to be part of the former, but don't want to hear about the latter. We want the riches, but not the responsibility when it all turns nasty.
From the outside, then, the common perception of Maggie Cheung Man-yuk is she has lived the dream everyone is chasing. Film stardom, international fame and fortune have all been hers in a career spanning some 20 years. But it has come at a cost. A well-documented and tempestuous relationship with the local press has ensured Cheung no longer spends all her time in Hong Kong, preferring to escape for months at a time to the relative anonymity she enjoys in Paris, far from the limelight that follows constantly when she is on these shores.
She is back in Hong Kong to promote her latest film Clean, for which she picked up the best-actress award in front of an adoring crowd at this year's Cannes Film Festival. But a dinner she attended on her return to Hong Kong has left her shaking her head. She says she felt a rough edge around the dinner table; where once there might have been good humour and optimism, she found bitterness and sarcasm.
'It has been something I have noticed in Hong Kong for a while now,' says the 40-year-old. 'It is all down to the type of coverage you see in the local tabloids. We were talking about my singing, which I do in the film, and I am not necessarily supposed to be a good singer or a bad singer. But my friends were all focusing on the negative and only the negative. This would not happen in Paris; people at least find something positive to say.
'It comes down to the type of coverage we get here; always looking for the negative things, to bring you down or point the finger. It really got too much for me and that's why I stay away for long periods of time.'
