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I'm shy. I'm not sociable. I'm very insecure.
Fans say I have a lot of sorrow in my eyes. It's true.
I think doing love scenes is never easy without a strong emotional background.
If I want to experience the life of an ordinary person, I cannot do it in Asia.
As an Asian actor, I would like once in my life to do just one Hollywood movie. It would be a memorable experience.
I really enjoy the process of making movies. The only thing that really concerns me is working with great directors and actors, and that is fun and exciting.
John Woo is a very nice and kind person; he gives almost no direction at all, trusting me to come up with the character. But when I think of him, I think of explosions!
I think the love scenes are very powerful and they're not trying to simply show the bodies of the actors but trying to reflect the inner feelings of the character so it's easier in that way.
I think movie makers in every country are looking for ideas. It's interactive. And sometimes we remake a lot of Hollywood films but we don't buy the rights, we just try to imitate those films.
Acting has always been a way for me to express the emotions I had buried. If I hadn't acted, I would have gone insane. In my acting class, I could let out my real tears and everyone thought it was the character. But no, it was me.
Once I'm committed to a role, I will go very deep into it, even when I'm not at work. I'll keep on studying the script, maybe 40 or 50 times. I might call a scriptwriter at three in the morning to say I've thought of something new.
Ang Lee is very precise. He will show you everything, and will let you know what he is thinking about the whole project. There are a lot of rehearsals before shooting, and you already reach a certain standard. Then he will ask for more.
I don't want to become more famous because I don't have any privacy anymore and I hate that very much. Outside of work I just want to be an ordinary person, not to be recognized, not a monkey on the street when everybody is looking at you.
I don't want to be more famous. I enjoy making movies but I enjoy my private life too. As an actor, to do it once in my lifetime I think would be a good experience. But I'll just leave it to fate. I had a chance to work with Ang Lee because of fate.
My parents broke up when I was six. Before, I was a very active, naughty child, but after my father left me, I stopped talking. I became very good at hiding my emotions. I felt so ashamed of telling others that I didn't have a father, because that was not common in the 1960s.
I always believe that Kar-Wai has a complete script: he just doesn't show it to us. He wants us to experience and explore the character. He gives you a lot of space, and you know every time will be a very long journey. You just live in the character, and that's very different from other directors.
The most difficult thing is that I don't speak Mandarin and I had this experience - of working in a language that I don't understand - before and it's really horrible. Eighteen years ago, I played a mute in one film because I couldn't speak Mandarin. There was another film where I had to speak Vietnamese. It's horrible!
I was 19 years when I got into acting training classes at a TV station and then I found a way to express my feelings. My father left us when I was a kid and I just shut down all of my emotions. I wasn't talkative; I didn't know how to communicate with people. I tried to separate from people. After I got into the classes I found a way of expressing myself through characters. I can cry behind a character, I can shout behind a character and it became a relief. And it's fun.
My father left us three times when I was between three and six. You just couldn't tell - suddenly one day he would leave and then maybe he would come back after six months without telling you why. And then maybe he would disappear again after a year and it's very difficult to take when you are four or five. You just don't know how to handle it and nobody in the family wants to talk about it. My mother didn't know how to tell us and she needed to work because we needed money to live.