It's a veritable Hollywood script: beautiful actress goes from porn, to B-grade films all the way to the respectable big time. But Shu Qi isn't buying it, at least not yet. For the privilege of making it in showbiz, for the privilege of being blessed with drop-dead looks and boundless energy, she has been paying her dues for too long. Though she made just two soft-core sex movies, porn doesn't want to give her up: sex, or at least the tug of it in a character, defines nearly all of the roles she has played. She wants to do more actingreal acting, not just flaunting her face in ads, or her neck-snapping body in thinly disguised erotic films. But she has been trapped by her successand by her adviser. Manfred Wong, the Hong Kong Svengali who discovered her and remains her manager, has seemingly never seen a script too poor or a commercial too cheesy to reject. Except, that is, for a little film called Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragonsomething Shu Qi is still trying to live down.
But if Shu Qi isn't quite ready to do the victory dance, she may be the last skeptic. The woman whose face is known across Asia yet who still isn't quite a star is making it onto the A list. Millennium Mambo put Shu Qi under the tutelage of director Hou Hsiao-hsien, a serious cine-aficionado who almost single-handedly put Taiwanese art films on the global map. (The two plan to start work on another project later this year.) Mambo didn't unduly impress the critics or crowds at its opening at Canneseveryone was hoping for a Crouching Tiger repeatbut Shu Qi's performance did. This film was essentially made for her, and her character carries the action. We see the spare, raw, brittle Shu Qi rather than the ditzy spray-on sex doll her earlier films tended to serve up. It's a psychological drama that charts the wrenching of her separate attraction for two very different men, and she gets to cry rather than squeal. "This is the best work I have ever done," allows the actress, sipping a glass of red wine, her favored quaff, in a trendy Hong Kong bar. "I'm seeing a different self in the film. It's so real, so much more genuine."
Suddenly Shu Qi is on everyone's must-have list, and not just to appear in her undies or pitch beer. She does a dramatic star turn in Visible Secret, which debuted in Hong Kong two weeks ago. That film, about a girl with the ability to contact spirits and see ghosts, has the imprimatur of Ann Hui, one of Hong Kong's few art-house directors. Its three-day box office opening in Hong Kong set an all-time record, eclipsing Ring, Hideo Nakata's horror flick. Meanwhile, Joan Chen, former-leading-lady-turned-auteur with Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, is courting her for a script to be shot in China, based on Yan Geling's novel, The Lost Daughter of Happiness. And last week Shu Qi signed up with one of the region's most sought-after directors, martial arts supremo Corey Yuen. His new project, Sunset Angelswhich, as was inevitable, is being touted as a Chinese Charlie's Angelsis backed by Columbia Pictures Asia and will start shooting in Hong Kong in August.
In other words, Shu Qi's moment is at handa moment that is only hers to lose. Which is always a possibility, considering her protean personality, which can be captivating or confusing, to moviegoers, friends, acquaintanceseven to herself. "I'm not somebody who understands myself very well," she says. "I have become good at letting the superficial projection of Shu Qi become the method. It makes me wonder whether that Shu Qi is really me." If you meet Shu Qi more than once, you get to know a range of different people. One day she'll tell you "she's only in it for the money"; the next she'll say she gets "pissed off when people say I'm greedy." She'll tell you she is sick of being typecast and yearns for art-house fare, but that she's comfortable in "the small film world" she inhabits, meaning the commercial world of Hong Kong. And she'll do it all from a theatrical trunk of varied voices and styles: Marilyn Monroe one day, bare-midriffed and yet innocent, and Betty Boop the next, squealing with enthusiasm and buried under a floppy Caribbean cricket hat (of which she has a drawer full). The real Shu Qi? We may not have seen her yet.
What's undeniably real is that Shu Qi, after a frenetic five years in the klieg lights, is one lived-in girl. Born into what she calls a "poor, but not terribly poor, traditional Taiwanese family," her childhood was far from blessed. The family never ate extravagantly, and Shu Qi (who grew up as Lin Li-huei but had her name changed at age 17 by a Taiwanese agent who thought it sounded more artistic) was seldom allowed to buy things for herself. She remembers a childhood education "revolving around hitting and scolding." That helped make her grow up quickly and with an independent streak. "I wasn't like an ordinary little 13-year-old who is raised and coddled and guided every step of the way by their parents." She ran away from home for brief spells more than 10 times as a teenager. Finally, at age 16, she took off for six months. Remorse, or perhaps the discovery of even less love in the outside world, sent her back. "I noticed that my mother's hair had turned white and realized that they did care about me. We're now good friends."
In the outside world she discovered modelingor rather, the photographers of Taiwan discovered the face that has now become famous Asia-wide. Manfred Wong, then a writer and producer in Hong Kong, saw Shu Qi's picture on a magazine cover in 1995 and tracked her down. He was searching for a newcomer willing to get naked for commercial director/producer Wong Jing, who was preparing to make Sex and Zen II, a Category III, or adults only, movie. Shu Qi had already done nude photographic books. She was being fleeced rather than managed by two Taiwan agents: for every $100 she was making, she says, they took $45. It wasn't hard for Wong to make her a more attractive offer, and Shu Qi looked upon him as a lifeline to a better future in Hong Kong.
So for both of their sakes, she stripped. In Sex and Zen II she played an evil spirit who sucks the energy from her victims. In one notable scene she makes lesbian-then-macho love (with a strap-on appendage) to heroine Loletta Lee, a 29-year-old actress who had sexed her way through much of the same fare. She was instantly noticed: half demonic, half nymph-gazing-through-the-eyes-of-the-worldly-whore. Wong Jing, at that time Hong Kong's most successful filmmaker, proclaimed that Shu Qi would one day be famous.
She emerged from that film all-woman, and her subsequent roles tended to place her as the young love interest of a middle-aged man (Jackie Chan, Gorgeous) or a destroyer of older men (Eric Tsang, My Loving Trouble). But she was missing out on some big roles. Taiwan director Sylvia Chang chose then Hong Kong It-Girl Gigi Leung over Shu Qi for Tempting Heart in 1999, fearing the growth of the character from teenage girl to mature woman would be too much of a stretch for Shu Qi. The actress, Chang feared, couldn't successfully communicate innocent. For good reason. "At 13, I'd done what most people do by the time they're 16," says Shu Qi, "at 20, what most do by the time they're 25." And thanks to manager Wong, she kept doing it and doing it. In 1997, the saurian Wong told TIME: "If you're an unknown and from Taiwan, there is no such thing as doing art and high-class films. Shu Qi knows if she doesn't strip she can't be a star."
And yet through all that dross, Shu Qi showed that she could actif only now and then, when it was easy, when the talent just poured from her. There was her first lead role, in Gorgeous, and a celebrated part in Mabel Cheung's City of Glass. Though she says she tries hard only "about 50% of the time," even that can surpass her most strenuous co-stars' efforts. Leslie Cheung says he was practically acted off screen by her womanwithal in the clever porn-parody Viva Erotica, her sixth Hong Kong film. Hong Kong heartthrob Nicholas Tse says she "intimidated" him in Young and Dangerous: The Prequel, even though she came with none of what he calls "that big star shit." He concludes: "She's the only actress I'd pay money to go and watch in Hong Kong." Mainland Chinese actor Geng Le, who worked with her in Beijing Rocks, calls her "effortless," which he clearly means as a compliment. Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung bursts with praise. "She told me she wants to give up acting," Cheung says. "I keep telling her she should do less, but that she must not give up. It would be criminal. She could go very much deeper if someone made her want to."
That someone is plainly not manager Wong. His role in the past four years, he says, has been teaching her to say no. "She's very casual in some ways, and she keeps changing her mind every 10 days," he says. But others in the industry regard Wong as the problem. Two years ago, Shu Qi had numerous chances for a break into big roles; many thought she could become a Chinese version of the young Juliette Binoche. But Wong kept her on the treadmill, keeping up with the churn-out-the-crap-fast mentality of the local industry. Hong Kong chews up and spits out its starlets at stock-market speed knowing that in 10 minutes they could all be dinosaurs. "At the beginning everyone wanted this Cinderella fairy tale to come true," says director Yonfan. "But she became damaged by the system."
The biggest wrench occurred in 1999, when Shu Qi went to the U.S. to talk with Taiwanese director Ang Lee. He was working on Crouching Tiger and wanted her in it. Shu Qi was Lee's initial choice for the role of Jen, the young beauty who steals the sword, the center of the kung fu epic's plot. "Physically, she's incredible," Lee enthused at the time. Shu Qi was on boardfor eight weeks. Then manager Wong pulled her because he had committed her to a Japanese tea commercial for Coca-Cola. "She was supposed to shoot from April to November," Wong says, "but it turned out she had a previously existing contract." Lee told Wong his big-budget film required the cast to be on hand every day and couldn't release Shu Qi for a commercial shootwhich would take perhaps five days. "I told Ang, it was hard to commit to a project for so long," Wong recalls, "as she also had to earn money and pay the rent." In the end, Wong and his star opted for the commercial, and it was Zhang Ziyi who ended up atop the tiled rooftops, on horseback in China's western desert and at the Oscar ceremony in March. Sitting in his office in Hong Kong's Tin Hau district, Wong now says: "I have no regrets." After a pause, he adds: "Ang Lee should have been most disappointed. You watch Zhang Ziyi in the film, and she's following Ang's directions to the letter. Shu Qi would have added a different layer. Her personality would have made far more of it."
That's one way of looking at the worst debacle in his client's career. What does Shu Qi say about giving up the part? "These things are all about timing," she snaps. "For God's sake, don't give me a hard time. It's not like I haven't been trying." She has a point. Directors routinely talk of Shu Qi's soul as an actressand how little of that essence makes it to the big screen. And that pinpoints one of the biggest problems with Hong Kong's cinema industry, now so celebrated in Hollywood. Drama isn't deemed commercially viable enough. The only genre now being made is action-latte. If Shu Qi is half as good as some directors believe she is, then there's scarcely a local vehicle out there to showcase her talent. French director Leos Carax (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf) met Shu Qi in April when he came to Hong Kong to cast a new film and, like so many men across Asia, was blown away: "Great young actresses don't come around very often. Like Juliette (Binoche), a young Sandrine Bonnaire, or this girl per-haps, Shu Qi."
Her breakthrough finally came when Hou Hsiao-hsien cast her in Millennium Mambo as Vicky, a nightclub hostess torn between two men. Hou initially worried that Shu Qi wouldn't be daring enough, that she didn't have the artistic depth to push herself to explore the far range of emotional experiences. "My first impression was that she was completely overworked," says the director. "Hong Kong's film industry does not provide, like Hollywood, systematic help to provide a good acting environment to inspire professional works. A lot of actors and actresses in Taiwan and Hong Kong become weary due to the very passive state of their acting careers." By the time he finished shooting, however, Hou felt he had tapped a true star. "She's tough, bright and full of instinct. She delivered more emotional content than I expected. Her improvising was so violent and direct, she brought a sense of simplicity and naivety to the role of Vicky." Shu Qi surprised herself, too: "Before this project, I felt like I'd used up so much of myself. I have played so many roles and so many personas that I almost feel I have nothing left to give when I come to a project. But working with Hou Hsaio-hsien eclipsed everything. I learned to look at acting in a different way, how to let a character inhabit you, rather than you it. I'm feeling much freer."
Shu Qi, in other words, is breaking out. She is doing films that matter. And she is freer than ever before from her manager's whims. "I'm now controlling Manfred," she says. "It used to be that he accepted all the offers and would only tell me afterward. Most of them I didn't want to do." How do they still manage to work together? "I shield my real self from him and just focus on work," she says. "I don't want him to know too much about me, too much of my private life." She wonders what would happen if they did split up, what he might do with all of the insights he has stored up. "It would make me feel very vulnerable," she says. "That scares me." Shu Qi isn't prepared to say exactly what it is that might be so worrisome. Nor will she say how much her manager takes as a commission from her earnings, though she does concede that "the contract hasn't changed since we signed it in 1996."
Perhaps she will never shake the older man who created her, who pulled her from the loneliness of Taiwan and made her a star. It's all related to Hong Kong's peculiar film business and the insecurities it has created within her. Locals flock to her films but frequently trash her imperfect grasp of Cantonese. More experimental markets suit her, and she's hugely popular in Japan and South Korea. But the Hong Kong press labels her as arrogant, greedy, cruel and uncooperative, precisely because she doesn't play by the same rules as everyone else. It has been painful but has also helped her develop a thick shell: she is obsessively private and beneath the various Shu Qi personas, one can discern the sad heart of a lonely, ultimately underloved, little girl.
But it's that very aloofness that creates and sustains her magic, that Garboesque detachmenthers exclusively in Asiathat has brought her to the edge of big-time success. Flashback to the making of Beijing Rocks last year. Stuck on a field, in a trailer on the set outside Beijing, she is sitting next to Geng Le, the film's top star, both of them shivering. It's 3:00 a.m. and -10 C, and the rain pelts. She is in role-playing mode and shoots Geng a deterrent look as he prepares to speak. "Careful. Say a bad word and I'll break your balls." He sizes up the threat. "Well, she's always ribbing me, she bullies me but in a friendly way, like I'm her brother." She interrupts him. "Yes, but he also means to say I'm sensitive, understanding, caring," she purrs. Geng Le starts to tick off those attributes like a parrot. Shu Qi laughs, and it appears for all the world like she couldn't be more at peace with herself. But reality is fragile, and even in that moment, you know she's not. There is a line Marilyn Monroe's character Cherie, the wanna-be singer, delivers in Bus Stop: "You get discovered, you get options and you get treated with a little respect." Real life hasn't quite worked out so simply for Shu Qi, but along the way from Category III to Cannes, she has been getting her act together. Sit back and enjoy as Shu Qi starts to reveal her real self.