Quotes of the Day

He stood out in the prim world of Canto-pop like Eminem at a church social. Nicholas Tse Ting-fung became an idol by smashing guitars onstage—almost a ritual for rockers in the West but a gesture of liberating anarchy in Hong Kong. A handsome guy whose mood could swing from brooding to furious in a heartbeat, Tse, 22, is the top pop star of his generation, and an actor whose promise every top director has hailed. He notched a score of hit CDs and more than a few famous lady friends, including Mainland mega-diva Faye Wong and Canto-princess Cecilia Cheung.

Yet Tse has attracted off-stage trouble—charges of wrecking cars and assaulting photographers—with the same magnetism that sets his fans screaming their lust at him. The aura of Celebrity Bad Boy has hung on the kid like the "Kick Me" sign on the back of a high-school loser.

At the moment, Tse is wearing another unfashionable uniform: that of a convict in the Hong Kong penal system. A judge last week found him guiltyof "conspiracy to commit perversion of public justice," a fancy way of saying Tse tried to weasel out of an embarrassment and, in doing so, committed a crime.

On March 23, Tse's black Ferrari F360 Modena crashed on Cotton Tree Drive in downtown Hong Kong. Who was at the wheel? Tse's former chauffeur Shing Kwok-ting, according to the original police report. Further investigation indicated otherwise: Tse had actually crashed the car, called Shing at home and at Shing's suggestion, Tse left the scene, allowing the chauffeur to ask the arresting officer, Lau Chi-wai, if he could "stand in" for Tse as the culprit. Shing and the officer then went to the Central Police station, where Lau asked him to fill out forms indicating that he was thedriver. According to press reports, Tse was driven from the scene by Cheung, his romantic link of the moment. The story was now sounding like a Hong Kong knock-off of the Puff Daddy-Jennifer Lopez escapade three years earlier.

Although Tse refused to testify at his trial, his lawyer, Cheng Huan, submitted a statement Tse allegedly made to government anti-corruption officials on April 12, the night of his arrest, in which he admits to having crashed the car himself. It says Tse fled the scene because there were no officers present and "I was in a hurry to take a plane to Thailand." This contradicts a comment Tse made to Time three days after the crash: "No, it wasn't me.... I gave it (the car) to my driver to get it fixed but it rained that day and I guess the driver wasn't used to 400 horsepower."

Tse should have remembered the first rule of stardom: Never talk to the press; they might print what you say. By now, he also ought to have figured out the conundrum of celebrity: that being rich and famous means you can indulge your darkest fantasies—but it also means you can't, because someone is always watching; someone will tell the press. Bad boys get caught.

Nic Tse had the pedigree for the baddest of Bad Boys. His father is Canto-popinjay Patrick Tse-yin, prime dude of '60s cinema, who vaulted from "himbo"—male bimbo—roles in comedies and musicals to the haunted hero of the classic Story of a Discharged Prisoner (remade as A Better Tomorrow , with Chow Yun-fat in the Tse role). Nic's mother is Deborah Li, an actress in '70s soft-core sex films (Hong Kong Emmanuelle). They sent Nic to Canada to learn English when he was seven; he then attended a prep school in Arizona. His parents divorced in 1996, and Li is still steamed about Patrick's cavalier parenting skills. "When someone told him that his son was in a fight at school," Li said at a press conference this June, with Patrick at her side, "his response was, 'Great, fighting is good!'... Now tell me, isn't that an infuriating way to raise your son?"

Patrick did get Nic into the music business. At 15, the lad performed karaoke for an executive of Emperor Entertainment Group, a Hong Kong artist management and recording company. He left school to pay homage to the music muse, and after a rough start—"For two years I had nothing but crap thrown at me"—he skyrocketed as a new Prince of Canto-pop. This year he won a World Music Award as China's top-selling artist. And a poll of 1,343 Mainland students found him to be the fourth highest-ranking "idol," after Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong and Bill Gates. (Hmmm: diplomat, oarsman, entrepreneur, rock star; prc kids have a nice sense of variety.)

Like virtually every Hong Kong singer, Tse made films. In his debut, Young and Dangerous: The Prequel, he revealed a complex screen persona, seductive and lonely, under that peekaboo mop of hair. He impressed critics as a gangster's protégé in Metade Fumaca and as the tyro gunman in Tsui Hark's Time and Tide. They called him a natural—not the next Andy Lau but the one and only Nicholas Tse.

Now he is more likely to be the subject of a Hong Kong crime movie than the star of one. While hundreds of his fans wept outside the court, Tse showed no emotion when the verdict was read: he was still playing the tough guy. His sentence, to be announced next week, can be no more than two years. One lawyer familiar with the case guesses that Tse will avoid hard time and be given community-service hours: "They might make him sing in old-lady homes."

Well, it's better than stewing in stir. But for the reigning rebel of Chinese pop, crooning to grannies might be hard time indeed.

• RICHARD CORLISS
• Nicholas Tse, Hong Kong pop idol and movie icon, loves playing the Bad Boy, but bad boys get caught