Also showing: Louis Fan
For several weeks early this year, Louis Fan Siu-wong was leading a life of deep contrasts, his appearance changing drastically following the patterns of the day. During daytime, he was a sharply attired, multilingual Interpol agent; as the sun set, he would morph into a bedraggled beggar.
The problem of reconciling two roles within a day doesn't worry many Hong Kong actors these days, with the dwindling number of local productions. Fan is probably one of the few who have been blessed with the predicament, thanks to how busy he has been during the past year. The Moss (which opened in May) and Connected (released today) are just two of six films in which he has appeared this year, and he has roles in upcoming films such as martial arts-meets-romantic comedy Butterfly Lovers, historical drama Ip Man, action comedy Kung Fu Chef and a cameo (as the proprietor of a school-uniform shop) in modern-day rom-com I Can Love.
It's a staggering workload, especially in view of how scarce his screen appearances in Hong Kong have been since the late 1990s. Fan - who made his acting debut aged just three, and was crowned one of the city's best martial arts actors by his late teens - spent most of the intervening years working on the mainland, in films and television shows rarely seen in Hong Kong. Nearly 30 years into his career, and his best-known outing remains 1991's The Story of Ricky, an adaptation of a Japanese manga series about a robust young man's bloody skirmishes while serving time for attempting to avenge the murder of his girlfriend.
'People on the mainland still call me by that name,' Fan says. 'Either that or they'll call me Xu Zhu, the monk I play in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, the TVB series [based on Louis Cha's wuxia novel] still being rerun on Hunan Satellite Television. The viewers still think our version [from 1997] is the best.'
The irony of people remembering him from something he did more than a decade ago is not lost on Fan, and he's quick to admit he's glad to return to Hong Kong for a change 'so that people won't forget who I am'. But he has no regrets about plunging headlong into the mainland market back then, even though it could have scuppered his Hong Kong career once and for all.
'There's much more space up north for you to develop yourself - the opportunities are unbelievable,' he says. 'I was cast as a pianist in a television series four years ago.'
Fan says he decided returning to Hong Kong was timely, as local filmmakers have been complaining of a dearth of martial arts actors. 'I was talking to [Donnie Yen] Ji-dan when making Ip Man, and he was saying how you couldn't really train someone there and then to do all these stunts. It's hard for the actors, and audiences can easily tell they're not the real deal when they strike the wrong poses,' he says.