Two French directors turned on the charm to woo actress Carrie Ng Ka-lai into accepting a starring role in their new film.
Julien Carbon and Laurent Courtiaud told Ng they needed someone with her natural beauty and glamour to star in Red Nights, a French-language thriller set against a backdrop of Cantonese opera.
The directors, who co-wrote Johnnie To Kei-fung's Running Out of Time in 1999, said they had both wanted to work with the 45-year-old actress (right) for years.
'When we look at Carrie, we see an actress of the past, like Ava Gardner or Grace Kelly, the greatest Hollywood stars of the 1950s and 1960s who we don't have any more, even in France,' Courtiaud said.
Ng, who hasn't had a film role in nearly a decade since she won a best supporting actress award for her role in Jacob Cheung Chi-leung's The Kid (1999), admitted she was flattered by the compliments.
'They told me that French actresses these days look more like the girl next door, and that they're not glamorous any more. So I asked them if they thought I was beautiful and they said, 'Yes, you're gorgeous'. I was flattered and decided to take on this project.'
