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On February 1, 2002, Kao Chin Su-mei  walked down the red carpet - as she had done many times before when attending the star-studded Golden Horse film awards.

As in the past, she was dressed for the occasion. But this time she was outfitted in full aboriginal attire - and the red carpet led her to Taiwan's legislature. It was her first day as a representative in the island's raucous lawmaking body.

'I knew nothing at all about the legislature before I was elected. I was a total stranger to the lawmaking body, and my colleagues also saw me as a movie star who knew nothing about politics,' the former singer and actress said.

'But I told myself I would get over it. I thought that if I knew nothing about politics, about lawmaking, I could always find someone to help me.'

Ms Kao made headlines last month when she joined forces with a number of indigenous Taiwanese who want their ancestors' names removed from the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which honours Japan's war dead including 14 class A war criminals from the second world war.

'It is absurd for the indigenous soldiers to be placed together with their persecutors at the Yasukuni shrine. They were victims and they were not Japanese,' she said.

About 28,000 Taiwanese, a number from aboriginal tribes, were forced to fight for the Japanese military government during the war, when Taiwan was a Japanese colony.

'If Japan continues to reject our demand, we plan to take the case to the United Nations,' she said.

Ms Kao has also sharply criticised the government of President Chen Shui-bian for proposing a NT$480 billion ($118 billion) budget to buy arms from the  US, saying the government should  build ties with the mainland and use the money  to improve  life  for Taiwan's 460,000 indigenous people, roughly 2 per cent of the population.

As a member of the Taiya tribe, indigenous issues are high on Ms Kao's agenda. She spent her first three-year term studying various bills related to indigenous welfare and visiting more than 800 aboriginal tribes to gather first-hand information.

'I used a video camera to record what I saw and used  it as a reference to question the government officials and draft legislative bills,' she said.

The 39-year-old is now a well-respected politician in Taiwan, regardless of whether people agree with her political views.

'If I want to do something, I want to do it well. I am the kind of person who is not easily defeated,' she said.

She recalled that years ago, when given a role in the television soap opera Love, in which the heroine spoke the local Taiwanese dialect, 'I spoke not even one word of Taiwanese'.

'I hesitated to take the offer but the director told me he was confident I could do it,' she said. 'So I got the role and the popular 300-episode series ran for two long years.'

That experience repeated itself when she took on the role of a Chinese woman marrying a gay Taiwanese-American in order to get permanent residence in the US, in acclaimed director Ang Lee's Oscar-nominated  The Wedding Banquet.

'I spoke very little English at that time. But word by word, I learned to speak it well in the movie,' she said.

That effort helped the film win the Golden Bear award at the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival.

Before acting, there was singing. Ms Kao started out as a part-time singer at a restaurant in Taichung to pay for her high school tuition fees. Her performances attracted the interest of a TV producer who introduced her to the world of show business.

She has suffered her share of setbacks.  She invested in a bridal shop during a two-year hiatus from performing but it was destroyed by a fire in 1996 that killed six of her workers. She herself had to be treated for smoke inhalation. And she spent more than NT$20 million ($4.87 million) to help the victims' families as well as her surviving workers.

When she finally decided to return to show business in 1999, she was diagnosed with liver cancer.

She made it through surgery and became a volunteer promoting cancer prevention in Taiwan.

It was to be the first step of her political career.

In 2001,  encouraged by her family, she  surprised many of her  show business friends by running for the legislature and winning a seat representing indigenous people.

'This is a complete change in my life,' she said. 'It means a heavy workload, burning the midnight oil and no more of the glittering show business world, but I have no regrets.'



From big screen to the political stage