Between 1984 and 2010, Hong Kong celebrity Maggie Cheung Man-yuk appeared in 79 movies – although, by her personal admission, she disliked a lot of them. She usually felt at odds with the town’s commercially pushed cinema business, craving as an alternative for severe art-house tasks.
“I have nothing against commercial films, but if you’re in a movie [and] you feel the script and everything else about it has no meaning – it’s just another production that the boss can add to his list – I don’t think you should do it,” Cheung advised the South China Morning Post in 2001.
Finding her inventive voice
Cheung did discover some artistically inclined movies to work on in Hong Kong, notably for Wong Kar-wai. The 2000 basic In the Mood for Love was considered one of her private favourites, and he or she additionally had a cameo in its unfastened 2004 sequel, 2046.
Cheung additionally starred in Wong’s 1988 debut, As Tears Go By, which she stated was “the first [film] in which I can recognise myself as an actress”. She additionally had a job in Wong’s groundbreaking Days of Being Wild (1990), although she famous it’s extra of a director’s movie than an actor’s – “the film is the star,” she stated.
Maggie Cheung and Andy Lau in a nonetheless from As Tears Go By (1988).
But Cheung’s most spectacular flip got here not for Wong, however for Stanley Kwan Kam-pang, when she portrayed the ill-fated Thirties Chinese movie star Ruan Lingyu within the clever 1991 biopic Center Stage (also called Actress). Cheung’s meticulous, well-researched efficiency gained her the Silver Bear for finest actress on the Berlin International Film Festival.
