Ten years after he attended the Tokyo International Film Festival for the screening of The Grandmaster, Tony Leung returned to the festival on Thursday to conduct a masterclass.
The Hong Kong acting icon, dressed in a black tailored suit and fashion-forward Kolor sneakers, was met with warm applause at a packed house at Tokyo’s Hulic Hall. Festival programmer Shozo Ichiyama began proceedings with Leung’s early years as an actor, namely his work with Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien on the classic A City of Sadness, which Ichiyama considered one of his personal favorites. A City of Sadness was notable as it was set in Taipei, and Leung, at the time, had no experience working outside of Hong Kong and couldn’t speak Mandarin.
“It was the start of my career, and I wanted to challenge myself,” Leung said through an interpreter on why he took on the role, given his language limitations and lack of experience. “At the time I wasn’t familiar with the history of Taiwan, so I had to learn about it. I read a lot of books to prepare,” he said.
“I do not speak Taiwanese so that’s why the director created that character [who couldn’t speak],” Leung added. He said that Hou had an artist friend who lived outside Taipei who had lost the ability to speak due to an accident. “I learned a lot from this artist in terms of acting,” Leung revealed, and he paid particular attention to the artist’s facial expressions, gestures and attitude. “I wanted to put myself in a very isolated environment — I wanted to know what the world was like for someone who couldn’t speak.”
Those early experiences on A City of Sadness were important for Leung as they shaped the way he prepared for roles, and he thanked Hou for giving him some of the tools he still uses. “With the acting, I tried to put pressure on myself and read a lot of books. This is how I developed a love for literature. I made a lot of discoveries on how to depict the character. My understanding became very deep,” he said.
This period also taught Leung some valuable lessons in naturalistic acting, something that he is renowned for today. “Another blessing [on this project] was that there were a lot of amateur actors working on it. I was really surprised as they were doing a lot of great acting. I started to doubt my own skills,” he added. “I wanted to know how I could look more natural and realistic in my acting. This film had a huge impact on my acting career.”
Ichiyama asked Leung whether Hou’s direction had a significant bearing on his performance, especially as he was a young actor in foreign surroundings. Leung joked that Hou was so busy that he didn’t care all that much about his performance and left it to him to figure it out. “Maybe that was good, but it was also difficult!”
The talk moved on to Leung’s long and fruitful professional relationship with Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai. In all, the duo have worked together on seven films over a period spanning almost thirty years, and the lineup includes classics of world cinema such as Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love and 2046, the last of which was screened before the masterclass.
Leung was asked how his relationship with Wong began and what made it so enduring and successful. “When I first met him, I was kind of stuck with my acting, I didn’t know what to do, and my acting wasn’t getting better,” he said.
Leung talked about the first time working with Wong on 1990’s Days of Being Wild, a film that is also notable for being the first time that the director worked with cinematographer Christopher Doyle. He recounted a story of working on a scene with Maggie Cheung and how she nailed her scene in a few takes. “[Wong] was watching my acting, and he probably knew immediately what wasn’t good about my acting. We were taking 10 to 20 takes of my scenes. I was thinking maybe I’m not good at acting,” Leung said. “[Wong] said you have a lot of technique, a lot of stuff that is just made up. He told me to not use that, disassemble all that.”
The actor added that when he saw the finished film, he realized that Wong had a talent for drawing the best out of his performers and that’s what pushed Leung to continually keep working with him. After working with Wong on two to three films, Leung said he started to get a sense of what the filmmaker was aiming for, and that the experience proved to be what he called his second stint of acting training.
“When I was making A City of Sadness, I had one wish — how I can look as natural as the amateurs? Working with Wong, I was able to make that wish a reality. Now I was able to show the kind of acting I wanted to show.”
Ichiyama asked Leung about Wong’s method of working without scripts, which has become an industry legend. Leung said that Wong does have scripts, but joked that “he doesn’t show [them] to us!” “All the actors are aware of the story and what their character is,” Leung explained in greater detail. “[Wong] would give clear direction, but as to how the story unfolded and where it went, we didn’t get direction on that. This is the unique way he works.”
“[Wong] wants to create a lot of leeway on the set,” Leung added. “He does have a script, but he wants to consider how the actors, the camera and other things on set are in the moment. He wanted that leeway. When we have too much information, we do a lot of preparation, and he didn’t want that to happen.”
Leung was then asked about his work on 2046, specifically, and how his character of Chow developed from In the Mood for Love. “[2046] is a special work for me. The character I played in In the Mood for Love is the same, but [Wong] wanted me to demonstrate a different set of skills in 2046. So Chow has a different lifestyle. I wanted a mustache and Wong said no way. But I really needed that mustache to portray a different character. At Cannes, after the premiere there, he came over to me and said ‘it was better that you had the mustache.’”
Ichiyama then asked Leung about his most recent work that has included the Hollywood blockbuster, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and whether this signaled a greater willingness on the actor’s part to work on international productions.
“I am always interested in working in lots of different places,” Leung said, suggesting that he would like to work on a Japanese project if the right one came along. “I want to work in Europe, and next year I will work on a project in Germany,” he said alluding to, but not naming, Ildikó Enyedi’s Silent Friend that he is attached to star in. “I have been prepping for eight months [for this project], and reading lots of books.”
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