by CINDY PERLMAN
Entertainment News Daily
27 November 2000

“I’ve fought with guns,” Chow Yun-Fat says. “I’ve fought with my hands. But I’ve never done a fight scene where I fly through a big bamboo forest on wires and fight at the top of a tree.

“It was most exhilarating.”

He’s speaking of Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which received critical raves at this year’s Cannes Festival, won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival, has broken box-office records across Asia and is scheduled for nationwide American release in December.

Lee’s elegantly shaped blend of mythic drama and state-of-the-art martial-arts is a new departure for Chow, who besides his American efforts as star of “The Corruptor” (1999), “The Replacement Killers” (1998) and “Anna and the King” (1999) is best known for John Woo’s ultramodern Hong Kong action hits “A Better Tomorrow” (1987) and “Hard-Boiled” (1992).

“It has everything I long for in a movie, including action, romance, and science fiction,” Chow says. “There is only one problem. It’s all in Chinese.

“Sorry,” he says, looking almost apologetic. “You will have to read the subtitles.”

That’s the only reservation Chow - or, for that matter, Hollywood as a whole - seems to have about the film, which was originally intended to star Hong Kong action star Jet Li, who dropped out in order to do “Romeo Must Die” (2000).

Chow wasn’t intimidated by the martial-arts genre, even though his previous action films had all been of the guns-and-explosions variety.

“I was told, ‘Fat, you will not fight with guns. You will be given a sword. And you will leap in the air, touch a rooftop and fly the length of a long field before your feet touch the ground again,’” he recalls. “I came to understand that this film is like an action ballet.”

Based on the ancient Chinese literary genre wu xia, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” casts Chow as a legendary 19th century warrior who decides to give up his sword and leave his violent life behind him. He gives the sword, dubbed “Green Destiny” to the woman his loves (Michelle Yeoh) to deliver safely to a new warrior.

But the sword is stolen, kicking off a breathtaking chase that also involves a female assassin named Jade Fox (Cheng Peipei) and a mystery woman (Zhang Ziyi) with remarkable martial-arts prowess.

The film was shot last year in Beijing and the Gobi Desert, and featured stunts coordinated by Yuen Woo-Ping, the special-effects artist who redefined the action genre with “The Matrix (1999).

“We spent two weeks on wires,” Chow says. “I was taught to leap and fly through the air. I felt like a graceful bird. I felt very powerful.”

What really intrigued him, he adds, was not the action but the film’s dramatic elements.

“They call me an action star,” he says, “but I have 15 years’ experience working as an actor working in dramas. I have this ability to do something more than hold guns and fight. But American audiences see my John Woo movies and think, “That’s all he can do. All Action. All explosions.’

“Those are not my passions,” the actor says. “I like to explore a larger world onscreen.”

Many foreign actors are cagey about professing their interest in becoming crossover stars, but Chow freely admits that he dreams of success in Hollywood.

“When I was in college, I saw a lot of Hollywood films, he explains. “I’m dying to be one of the biggest heroes of the big screen - I want to be John Wayne and Steve McQueen. I want to entertain.

“And I hope being Asian doesn’t matter,” he adds. “If you love a movie and you’re drawn to the movie, you don’t care what color the leading man is - you just enjoy the character he’s playing. You just enjoy the performance.”

Chow was born on Lamma Island, near Hong Kong, to a farming family so poor that they couldn’t afford electricity. He was 10 when the family moved to Hong Kong, and by the time he was 18 the future actor had become smitten with movies and television.

One day he saw a newspaper ad announcing auditions for a television drama, and the die was cast.

“I just walked in there and said, ‘I want to be an actor,’” he recalls. “But they said first I had to learn.

“Finally,” he says, “I got together what would be $35 in American money to take an acting-training class. When I graduated, I signed a contract with the TV station for 13 years.”

Under the terms of what he soon realized was an onerous - but unbreakable - contract, Chow ended up completing more than 1,000 television-series episodes and 70 television movies. By 1976 he had become a celebrity, but wasn’t satisfied with work on the small screen. Several low-budget independent films didn’t please him any better.

And then he met director John Woo.

“When I decided to cast Chow in “A Better Tomorrow,” he was a popular TV star,” Woo recalls in a separate interview, “but he was box-office poison. All his previous movies had bombed. But I saw an actor with a great heart. He reminded me of a young Steve McQueen or Clint Eastwood.

“He was macho but accessible - he made audiences smile and cheer.”

Woo gave Chow his trademark gun-in-each-hand fighting stance. He also gave him the dark sunglasses and long, black coat which became a fashion trend in Asia. Soon Chow had achieved the breakthrough he’d dreamed of, and found himself on the verge of American stardom as well.

The one hitch: He couldn’t speak English.

An intensive course of study prior to making “The Replacement Killers” helped, but Chow admits that he still has a ways to go.

“My English has gotten so much better, yes?” he says. “Honestly, I’m a very lazy guy. When I’m not working, I want to quit learning - the grammar, the pronunciation, the articulation. I hate it!

“I like to watch more English programs,” he says. “I try to listen, to understand. Then I can respond. But it’s difficult - I’m in my 40s now. I try to do my best.

“I still don’t understand why the pauses are so long in English,” he admits. “I feel like saying, ‘Speed it up!’ But I am trying. Just be patient with me.”

“Anna and the King” might have been his American breakthrough, but it performed disappointingly at the box office - a fact which has not soured his affection for the film.

“I will always think of it as a stunning movie,” Chow says. “I had a wonderful time working with Jodie Foster. What we did was a modern romance with the story. It’s easy to understand that some people like it and some people do not.”

One aspect of American stardom to which Chow does not aspire is the celebrity lifestyle. In Hong Kong, where he lives quietly with his wife, Jasmine, he says actors are not lionized. He is often to be seen on the bus or subway, or shopping at his local grocery store.

“I think of myself as a man with a fun job,” the actor says. “I am not special - I am just like any other worker. I should not shield myself from the other workers.”

He’s serious about Hollywood stardom - in the works are a prequel to “Crouching Tiger” and an English-language action movie called “King’s Ransom” - but he has no plans to move to the film capital.

“I come to North America a few times a year,” he says dismissively. “I don’t keep a house in Los Angeles. I prefer to stay where I came from.

“Plus I can’t move here because it scares my wife,” he adds with a laugh. “She can’t stand the idea of earthquakes.”

His next project, he adds, is much more appealing to his wife.

“It’s called a long vacation,” he says, laughing. “It’s not a Chevy Chase film - it’s me sitting around the house.”

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