Success by the Script
	Chinese actor Liu Ye wins raves without making waves
	By Ilya Garger

Posted Monday, January 26, 2004; 21:00 HKT
Liu Ye, China's hottest young actor, likes to talk about video games, basketball and Mel Gibson's Braveheart, to name a few favorite topics. He's eloquent and charming, liable to break into song in mid-sentence or wave his long arms to emphasize a point—for example, how much he idolizes Michael Jordan. But steer the conversation toward the minefield of politics, and the 25-year-old's dramatic exuberance fades away to embarrassed curtness. What does he think about censorship? "It's hard to say if it's good or bad." How about artistic freedom? "Definitely important, but sometimes you have to compromise." And the government? "I'd never make a movie that criticized China or the Communist Party... It's not worth the risk."

In return for his discretion, Liu gets a wide berth to do what he does best: act. Like most in his generation, he sees it as a fair trade. "I grew up in a period of reform," he explains. "I've seen how things that used to be banned, like love songs, have become commonplace and acceptable." This cautious optimism is coupled with a keen awareness that the freedom he enjoys—artistic and otherwise—is a new and fragile thing. "My life is unimaginable for my parents. I can go abroad when I want to; I can read anything I want on the Internet," he says. Talking out of turn, in his opinion, could jeopardize these gains.

In short, Liu brims with the sort of practicality that makes shrewd businessmen and uninspired actors.

But therein lies the surprise: despite his lack of rebel fire, Liu is a formidable talent. Award-winning directors such as Chen Kaige and Stanley Kwan have rushed to cast him, and foreign audiences are learning to recognize his soulful, brooding face from a string of high-profile films. Liu's first lead role, in Kwan's gay love story Lan Yu, won him a Best Actor prize at Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards in 2001. He starred in last year's Golden Globe-nominated Cultural Revolution romance The Little Chinese Seamstress, and made the film-festival rounds with Purple Butterfly, the latest from leading sixth-generation auteur Lou Ye. In December, Liu snagged his biggest role yet, in Chen's upcoming historical epic The Promise. "There are thousands of talented young actors in Beijing waiting for a chance," says Kwan. "But Liu Ye is the best of the crop."

Navigating the twin hazards of art-house exile and middling idoldom, he's emerged as a versatile and increasingly bankable actor in a country better known for its screen sirens than its leading men. His secret: a canny sense for when to take a gamble and when to keep his head down. "It's only worth risking trouble if a script is really good," he says. Lan Yu, which met his standards, had to be shot clandestinely in Beijing. The film was subsequently banned in China.

But for every banned movie he makes, Liu will also take a turn in a censor-vetted TV drama. "I play as many different roles as I can," he explains between takes on a horror-film set, "so that I can please as many people as possible. There are 1.3 billion people in this country and I can't satisfy them all by doing the same stuff all the time." Liu Ye wants to be all things to all people. And for now, at least, he seems to be succeeding.

With reporting by Jodi Xu/Beijing

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