IN MATTERS such as these, you would think primal instinct would take over but Irene Ng had been practising her first kiss for weeks. Granted, this wasn't just any kiss. It was her first on-screen kiss. And it was with Irish actor Pierce Brosnan, the man who would be Bond. Let's hope Brosnan appreciates the effort the British-born Chinese actress invested in the scene. 'I practised with my boyfriend in the mirror,' she admits.
'Our teeth met at one point,' Ng says of pressing the flesh with Brosnan. 'Then my chin hit his. Then, because Pierce now has a beard, I told him, 'It's hard to find you in there let alone give you a kiss'.' It took five takes to get it right.
Ng was in the territory to shoot Nightwatch, an American spy thriller which she described as 'very Bond, dare I say'. She plays Myra Tang, a Hong Kong-born, American-educated CIA agent who coolly delivers such cryptic lines as: 'Falcon, Falcon, this is Myra. Code Red.' Ng found herself battling gawking crowds as she ran on stilettos through Lan Kwai Fong in a chartreuse party dress so tight she could barely breathe, snogged Brosnan in a taxi, then chugged along on the Star Ferry and hence to Causeway Bay.
Ng first came to Hong Kong seven months ago when she performed at this year's Festival Fringe. She played one of the leads in the show Banana Skin, a humorous indictment of Hong Kong's less than profound value system. (Back in Britain, she appeared as a medical student in the controversial BBC drama series Cardiac Arrest.) Although her friends had warned her about the pink Rolls-Royces cruising the territory's streets, Ng was 'hardly prepared' for the impact of Hong Kong.
'I come from a very middle class background,' said the actress who conducted extensive research to flesh out her Banana Skin character, Veronica - your average, poor little rich Hong Kong girl. She read the now infamous Marie Claire article, 'Hong Kong's Richest Women: How They Spend Their Millions', which featured such enthusiastic confessions as 'I want to spend as much money as I can before it all goes away' from the likes of Lilian el Azar and Pansy Ho Hui.
'I couldn't believe these kinds of people existed at first,' says Ng, whose father is a British civil servant and whose mother is a housewife in the quiet suburbs of Kent. 'It was an absolute eye-opener. In fact, it was frightening. I could never live here. But I do really love Hong Kong.' So how does Brosnan rate? Does he, as recent reports suggest, really have halitosis? 'What? Halitosis?' Ng says, with a laugh. 'If he did, I didn't have a problem with it.' Dress supplied by Chanel. Shoes by Casadei from Lane Crawford. Hair and make-up by Karen Burd, Frederique's.
