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2046: Love by Numbers - L.A. Independent

 
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mu99le



Joined: 27 Jan 2003
Posts: 2597

PostPosted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 4:01 pm    Post subject: 2046: Love by Numbers - L.A. Independent

http://www.laindependent.com/link.asp?smenu=96&sdetail=2206&mad=No&wpage=1&skeyword=&sidate=

Love by Numbers
By KEVIN HERRERA, EScene staff writer 03.AUG.05

Tony Leung works out his issues with romance in 2046.
“It is very tiring to fall in love. I better leave it in the movies,” said a subdued Tony Leung — Asia’s Marlon Brando with a touch of Clark Gable’s charm. “I don’t mind falling in love in the movie, but not in real life. I just don’t want to take a risk and be hurt again.”

If any actor can identify with a character they play, it’s Leung. Blunt but endearing, insightful but yet mysteriously elusive, the 43-year-old veteran of television and the silver screen is practically a splitting image of the brooding Lothario he embodies in transcendent director Wong Kar Wai’s latest film 2046, a visually-stunning drama that examines love and regret through a serial womanizer’s experiences with six beautiful women whom he cannot bring himself to care for because of a fear of being discarded.

Sound familiar? For Leung it is. While he is nowhere near the playboy he portrays in the film (Leung has dated actress and model Carina Lau for the last 10 years), the Hong Kong native admits that his heart is off limits when it comes to the opposite sex.

“I fell in love once but it was a long time ago,” he said. “I see acting as a form of therapy, but even with this film, I still am afraid of letting my guard down. In that way I think I have something in common with the character. He becomes so cynical and a playboy because he got hurt and doesn’t want to get hurt again. He never tries to commit to any relationship anymore, I think, because he is afraid. He cannot take any failure and I think he believes the most perfect relationship is the one in the past that he has transformed in his own memory. He loves to keep it in him and because of that he is not willing to commit.

“Like him I am a pretty safe guy when it comes to relationships.”

But when it comes to his career, Leung is ready and willing to take risks. After establishing himself as a popular comedic actor on Chinese sitcoms, Leung abandoned the security and financial stability of TV and began working with experimental, but yet excitingly daring directors such as Wai, who are part of a cinematic movement in Asia known as The Second Wave, which dabbles in controversial political and social movements.

These films helped Leung win an award for best actor at the Cannes International Film Festival, an award he cherishes because it came from a wide selection of his peers.

“I never treat acting as a job or a study,” he said. “I learn from it, but I make sure that I enjoy it. It treat it more as a hobby and as a way to express myself without being shy. I can hide behind someone else in a character. For me it’s relief.”

Leung got his start in acting when he was 19. While working as an appliance salesman, he and good friend Stephen Chow, the man behind the action satire Kung-Fu Hustle, saw an add calling on young men and women to test their acting skills. After beating out 6,000 other applicants, Leung became a student at TVB, the world’s largest producer and distributor of Chinese-language programs, and after a few months of training, his career took off.

He is now being offered roles in mainstream Hollywood films (he did a cameo in Hero, an Asian film purchased and distributed here by Miramax), but Leung is being patient. He wants to wait for the right role because he plans on doing only a handful of American films. His dream is to work with Martin Scorsese, who is remaking one of Leung’s more popular films, Infernal Affairs.

“I grew up being influenced by many American films like Raging Bull and Taxi Driver,” he said. “They were just great stories with wonderful actors in them.”

Leung said he will concentrate this year on making a thriller along the lines of Seven, while at the same time advocate for more funding for films in China and the rest of Asia.

“We have seen production drop considerably in the last year or two, from about 250 productions a year to now about 50, so I am very concerned about the future of the film industry there,” he said. “What we need to do and what I will be focused on is combining our strengths throughout the region, get more people involved from other countries so that we can have more money on the production side to make quality films. If we do not make good films, then people will not want to spend money on them. They would much rather see big Hollywood movies.”

"a cameo in Hero"????!!! what a big and unforgivable error!!! Mad
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lemonberry



Joined: 28 Jul 2003
Posts: 796

PostPosted: Thu Aug 04, 2005 4:25 pm    Post subject:

but yet excitingly daring directors such as Wai

who is this writer? he even wrote Wai as the last name for Wong Kar-Wai.
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