AS A child star in the 1950s and '60s, actress Josephine Siao Fong-fong specialised in weepy melodramas. Her ambition was to be able to cry beautifully. In her latest movie, Always on My Mind, she does. 'I was trying to cry like Audrey Hepburn,' she says.
'At that time, I thought crying was the height of acting,' she recalls. 'Then one day actor Wu Fung said to me, 'You can cry fine, but go and see War and Peace. Go and see Audrey Hepburn cry. You'll find that you can cry beautifully'.' Today, Siao is held in as fond regard by Cantonese moviegoers as the American actress is by Western audiences. 'I never meant to stay in the movie business so long,' she says with a self-deprecating laugh. 'I never saw this as a career. I felt like I retired years ago.' But this year, with the two martial arts films Fong Sai Yuk, Parts I and II, and the sparkling comedy Always on My Mind, the legendary Siao Fong-fong returns to the silver screen, boosting what might have been rather ordinary films into notable hits.
It is a cool, grey day. The harbour is shrouded in mist. Inside the Ritz-Carlton, Siao has donned a maroon turtleneck and a padded, long, brown silk robe to ward off the cold. 'This belonged to my father,' she says proudly. She looks tall, stately, but also remarkably fragile.
At 45, Siao is still striking with big eyes, brown hair tinged with red, and dignified body language that comes from a childhood of ballet and etiquette. She has a self-assurance that comes from four decades of being in the public eye. Beneath the robe, she maintains a lithe figure, honed by years of dance and exercise.
She listens intently to every word. She lost the hearing in her right ear when she was two. Now the hearing in her left ear is also going. In the movies, she is ever the glib talker gliding through life. Her performance style is crisp and clipped, her lines fly fast and furious, she is never at a loss for words. In life, she talks at measured paces, thinking carefully about what she says.
Born in Shanghai in 1947, Siao came to Hong Kong at two and became a movie star at five. Under the domineering eye of her mother - known in film circles as 'Empress Siao' - she made 200 films by the time she was 21, starring in an endless string of musicals, melodramas and early martial arts flicks. She became an international star in Nobody's Child playing an orphan and singing the plaintive ballad, 'In the world, mother is the best/The motherless child is someone no one wants.' These days she can pick and choose her projects, but in the past she was shuttled from studio to studio non-stop. In the 1960s, she was a teen idol. Her face was plastered on posters, billboards, magazines, and pin-ups; her voice sang on records, radio andtelevision.