Six degrees of separation from Anthony Wong Chau-sang
Kylie Knott
Anthony Wong Chau-sang is hitting the boards at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts’ Lyric Theatre this month, in Yasmina Reza’s Le Dieu Du Carnage (“God of Carnage”). The son of a British sailor named Fred Perry and a Hong Kong Chinese mother, Wong shot to fame with hits such as Hard Boiled (1992) and The Eight Immortals Restaurant: The Untold Story (1993), which won him a Hong Kong Film Award. In 2006, he had a role in The Painted Veil, a film based on the 1925 novel of the same title by W. Somerset Maugham …
The British poet and novelist was one of the most popular writers in the 1920s and 30s, but he still had his share of legal woes: the names of the main characters in The Painted Veil were changed after he was sued by a couple in Hong Kong, and, for similar reasons, the colony was called “Tching-Yen” in early editions. Before landing on his literary feet, Maugham had had a varied professional life that included obstetrics and a stint as a secret agent during the first world war. In 1916, Maugham could be found in the Pacific, doing research for the novel The Moon and Sixpence, which is based on the life of Paul Gauguin …
The French post-Impressionist became known (although fame came posthumously) as an artist who experimented with synthetist style and colour, whose work would go on to inspire Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. In 1891, he travelled to Tahiti to paint illustrations for the most popular novel of the day, Pierre Loti’s The Marriage of Loti, and entered a period that became the subject of much interest due to his alleged sexual exploits. In the 1956 film Lust for Life, the frolicking Frenchman was portrayed by Anthony Quinn …
