Kick start

SOME PEOPLE begged and pleaded, as though they would move heaven and earth for it. Some flexed their social muscles in attempts to secure it. Some meekly stood in line for hours at auditions, hamming it up for all their worth. For Yuen Qiu, however, landing a role in Stephen Chow Sing-chi's Kung Fu Hustle was a breeze: it's all about drawing on a cigarette in a peculiarly earthy and jaded way.

'I was just accompanying a friend who was there for the auditions - and with these things taking so long I got pretty bored, so my eyes started flitting across the room out of curiosity,' she says, mimicking a comical movement of the head. 'And when I got bored by even that, I plucked a cigarette out of my bag and lit up. I'd never have known that I would get a part in the film with that.'

Chow, she says, was looking for someone who smoked the way she did. In an extraordinary turn of events, it became the actor-director's turn to do the begging and pleading for her to play the role. The result is the Landlady: a hilarious character based on the Hong Kong stereotype of someone in that profession - a plump, boorish middle-aged woman mostly seen in pyjamas, her hair in rollers and a cigarette always dangling from her mouth.

Given Chow's meticulous planning for Kung Fu Hustle - three years in the making and a budget of $150 million - it is obvious he did not fall merely for Yuen Qiu's smoking etiquette. She was also chosen because of her background in martial arts, having been a core member of what was known as the Seven Little Fortunes, a group of young Peking opera actors, which also included Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung Kam-bo.

Yuen Qiu was Hong Kong's first stuntwoman and a well-known 1970s kung fu actress. As the Landlady is a character that demands stunning acting and fighting skills, someone with Yuen Qiu's poise and dexterity was essential.

The fact that the last time she unleashed her moves on screen was in 1975 certainly complicated matters. Having retired early, she's just become a grandmother and freely admits that she had reservations about a comeback at this stage of her life. But the physical strain wasn't so much related to high kicks and suspended wires.