He preens, he poses, and he dances like there's no tomorrow. This is Shing, a flamboyant hunk nicknamed 'Sexy King' whose immaculate looks, cool demeanour and nimble moves are designed to send his army of admirers into a perspiring frenzy.
This is what Aaron Kwok Fu-shing looked like a decade ago - or at least how he appeared on screen, as the lead protagonist of the romantic comedy Para Para Sakura. That this fictional persona shares a name with the singer-actor and resembles so much of his real self is hardly coincidental. Kwok's turn in this critically maligned Jingle Ma Chor-sing production was one in a line of dapper chaps he played in Hong Kong films in the 1990s, a run which began soon after he established himself as a pop idol in 1990.
'Back then I was too ... stubborn,' recalls the singer-dancer-actor known to his fans as Ah Wong, a nickname derived from a skewed pronunciation of Aaron, but which also means 'the king' in Cantonese. In the 1990s, when he was one of the four so-called 'Heavenly Kings of Canto-pop', he wouldn't countenance appearing unkempt anywhere, whether in public or on screen. 'I didn't know how to let go. But time took care of that - as you become more mature and confident you accept different things,' he says.
We meet in the executive lounge at Sha Tin Racecourse - where he has just finished his duty as an honorary guest for a high-society event sponsored by a British couturier - and Kwok is still the dandy with neatly coiffed hair, a pin-striped three-piece suit, and a purplish necktie. Gone are the days, however, when he wore such outfits in a film.
Since the Para Para debacle - in which he came across 'as the number one 'himbo' in Hong Kong movies', according to a reviewer for this newspaper - he has been playing dishevelled characters and receiving critical plaudits for them. He has won Golden Horse awards for his roles as a demented detective in Divergence and a brutish father in After This Our Exile. He's also received warm reviews for his turn as a hapless 19th-century aristocrat in Empire of Silver, a period drama about a banking family at the tail end of the Qing dynasty.
'I don't want to repeat myself - it's meaningless and a waste of time,' Kwok says. 'You should do something which challenges you. The more complex they are, the more attracted I am to these roles.'
Having spent most of 2010 lost in music - he celebrated the 20th anniversary of the start of his pop career with a record, Never Ending Love - and acting in the underwhelming sci-fi film City Under Siege, Kwok will return to the fold this summer with two potential award-winning roles. Next week sees the release of The Detective 2, sequel to the 2007 film which brought him a best-actor nomination at the Hong Kong Film Awards; he plays a wacky private investigator commissioned to hunt down a schizophrenic serial killer. Then in July comes Gu Changwei's Till Death Do Us Part, about a village whose inhabitants are infected with Aids in a blood-selling scam. Kwok plays a boor who has to contend with his own failing health, the departure of his wife, and widespread censure when he decides to marry a fellow HIV carrier (played by Zhang Ziyi).