With Empty Hands role, Hong Kong pop singer Stephy Tang is poised to make the leap to serious actress
After several fluffy outings as rom-com heroine Bo, Tang’s dramatic roles in The Empty Hands, Somewhere Beyond the Mist and Husband Killers have cemented her resolve to become better known as an actress rather than a singer
Hong Kong pop idol Stephy Tang Lai-yan is not looking back in her dramatic mission to reinvent her career as a serious actress, and three titles making the rounds on the film festival circuit confirm her progress.
“It’s a new experience to me,” Tang tells the Post during a stopover in Hong Kong between trips to the Busan International Film Festival in South Korea and the Kaohsiung Film Festival in Taiwan, where Somewhere Beyond the Mist and Husband Killers were screened respectively.
“My past films were restricted to Hong Kong and, at most, mainland China. It’s only with these three new films that I’ve started to attend overseas film festivals,” she says, referring also to The Empty Hands. “In my recollection, I don’t remember having any of my films selected by festivals before this year.”
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All three films are showing in this year’s Hong Kong Asian Film Festival, which runs from October 31 to November 20, and Tang says that’s partly coincidence.
“Actors are in a passive position in terms of what they’re offered. But at just the moment that I was looking to transform myself, I was approached for three eclectic projects,” she says. “I say coincidence because Somewhere Beyond the Mist was shot three years ago and is only readied for a release now. For people to see these films at the same time, and they are all so different, the impact is significant.”
She is giving up her singing career to focus on film, Tang says. “In the last few years, I have been hoping that people would recognise me as an actress rather than as a singer. Of course I still do concerts but, in the past, I made movies as a singer, and now I hope I’m more an actress doing music. I’m determined to make this happen.”
With The Empty Hands alone – the first of Tang’s upcoming films to receive a general release – the 34-year-old has made enough of an impression to trade her former teen idol image for that of a serious character actress. A nomination for best actress at the Hong Kong Film Awards would not surprise.