Mainland actress Tang Wei is back in business. The 29-year-old winner of the Golden Horse for best new performer has been out of sight since her role in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution (2007), in which she played a student activist sent to seduce a Chinese traitor (Tony Leung Chui-wai) but later fell for his charms.
Mainland officials deemed her role in the film to be too 'controversial' due to explicit sex scenes. She was banned from appearing on mainland television last March, including a skincare advertisement in which she starred.
But the ban has reportedly been lifted and Tang (left) was spotted arriving at Chek Lap Kok airport this week to meet writer-director Ivy Ho Pik-man for a new film project tentatively entitled Crossing Hennessy. Shooting could start as soon as next month on the film, which will also star Canto-pop king Jacky Cheung Hok-yau.
Cheung is set to play an introverted electronics shopowner who is set up on a date with a girl next door (Tang), but the two end up falling for other people.
'I am looking forward to working with On Sai [Ho's pen name] and Hok-yau,' Tang said. 'My character is full of comic personality and I want to bring the audience a fresh feeling about me.'
Ho, the award-winning writer of dramas Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1996) and July Rhapsody (2001), praised Tang's fluency in Cantonese. Tang explained in an earlier interview she could speak and understand Cantonese mainly because she had lived across the border in Shenzhen for a while.