Actress Karena Lam Ka-yan loves being in love. In her latest film, Lam plays a lonely, pessimistic secretary who fantasises about being in love with her married boss, Tom (Ekin Cheng Yee-kin), but the actress says in real life she is constantly in love.
'I am very romantic and very optimistic about love,' Lam says. 'I am always in love.'
Lam, 30, says she has been in love six times, including her high-profile romance with music producer and composer Chan Kwong-wing which ended in 2005.
Lam says her character Pearl, in Ivy 'On Sai' Ho Pik-man's directorial debut Claustrophobia, indulges herself with dreams about her and Tom in her own fantasy world. 'I think it is a bit bitter, lonely and somewhat dark,' Lam says.
'Pearl is quite pessimistic when it comes to love which I think has a lot to do with her being brought up in a broken family,' she says. 'Her father running away led to her pessimism about love.'
Lam is also from a broken family: her parents separated when she was little. Three of her sisters stayed with her father in Canada and she was the only child to live with her Taiwanese mother. But she says despite her difficult upbringing she remains a loving and lovable person.