Sandra Ng unleashes a double dose of Lunar New Year levity

may be to suffer for her art, Sandra Ng Kwan-yu is not about to tolerate any more hairspray in her food. "Hold it for now," she tells her hairstylist, her lunch lying open on her desk for the better part of our interview, which doubles as her make-up session. "I ingested a mouthful of it yesterday and I could feel the plastic in me for a long time," Ng says, still not eating.

Often alternately fiery and wacky on-screen, the popular Hong Kong film actress, now 48, should know a thing or two about suffering. After all, when she starred in the first two movies, respectively released over the Christmas period of 2002 and 2003, Ng had regularly to endure the pain of tearing off the packing tape used to fasten the fake bosom for her vivacious hooker character Kam.

For the upcoming , the long-awaited third entry in the beloved comedy series, those painful episodes were a thing of the past, due to more advanced technology - although Ng still had to sit for nearly three hours a day to mount her 38G silicon breasts. "It is very tiring," she says, "but they can bounce very naturally this time."

On the one hand, you could say that Ng has brought the misery on herself, being the main force behind the sequel as both its producer and leading lady. On the other, it's hard to reason with someone who is struggling to remember why she started the project in the first place. "Now that you're asking me," Ng says slowly, "I'm really having a hard time recalling why I returned to the series with this movie."

The earliest inspiration for Kam - the absurdly optimistic character that Ng portrayed in - partly stemmed from the dreamer (also named Kam) that Ng played in the 2001 movie Her co-star, Andy Lau Tak-wah, encouraged her to develop the character further in future projects. As it turns out, Ng's long-time partner, the film director and producer Peter Chan Ho-sun, was looking to develop a comedy for his production company during that period.