There's silence on the line from Beijing when Stanley Fung Shui-fan is asked what lured him back to Hong Kong to play an aged amnesiac hit man in Accident.
'Nothing special attracted me to do that,' says the 64-year-old (below), whose turn in Soi Cheang Pou-soi's thriller marks only his third foray into Hong Kong cinema this decade. 'It's just that it's not like things I worked on in the past. I'm fine with anything offered to me as long as it's not that kind of stuff, which I hate.'
He's referring to the comedy roles he took in the 80s and early 90s, in a string of films revolving around crude men chasing women, such as the Romancing Star movies and the Lucky Star series. Fung recalls being typecast as a brassy, gag-spewing guy playing the same role repeatedly in movies devoid of narrative coherence and on-set discipline.
'On the Romancing Star movies, everyone was just fooling around - the set was like a huge playground,' he says. 'You'd turn up and say these incredible lines, or sometimes just silly things you made up on the spot.'
The films brought him fame and fortune and, protest as he might now, he did co-write and direct Return of the Lucky Stars in 1989. But Fung soon realised he was not being approached for dramatic roles.
'I can do comedy, but I can also do drama,' he says. 'But the Lucky Stars and Romancing Star films have left me trapped in the world of mo lei tau [nonsensical] comedy. I was very uncomfortable as I saw how those jobs were limiting my opportunities.'