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COVER STORY:
Brain Drain: |
ASIA | January 26, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 3 |
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Before shooting began, Fuqua took Chow and Sorvino to a farm where they could fire off tons of guns in preparation for the film's heavy artillery scenes. The director wanted Chow to have the experience of running out of ammunition--something he never seemed to do in those Hong Kong flicks (in A Better Tomorrow he fires, by our count, 51 rounds out of two sixshooters). "The funny thing," says Fuqua, "is that Yun-fat doesn't like guns at all. When he's done shooting them on the set, he hands them right back to the prop guy. Some actors go around fighting in bars, trying to live up to their macho hero status. Yun-fat does it on screen better than most, and then he goes home to his wife and garden." Woo, who served as an executive producer on The Replacement Killers, says he warned Chow about "Hollywood politics--there are a lot of games going on. I told him to ignore them and concentrate on his acting. In general, he was extremely happy. He had a lot of confidence and made lots of new friends." Woo believes Hong Kong audiences will embrace the film. "The people in Asia really miss him. Now he's back playing the same kind of character emotionally, but he's at a new, international level. Audiences will be surprised to hear him speak English, but at the same time they'll admire his courage. They love him." So Mr. Chow has gone to Hollywood. But don't expect him to "go Hollywood"--to surrender to the crushing glamour and excess of the place. "I see acting as a job," he says. "An actor is like a worker working in a factory. After that, I return to my real life." He happily spends that life with his wife Jasmine in a rented home in Southern California, while preparing for at least two more American films, one for Woo and one for Stone. Any other dream? He flashes the Chow smile and says, "To be a dumb actor in a movie." In his precise new English, he means non-talking, of course. No one could accuse Chow Yun-fat of being any other kind of dumb. If he can handle Mira Sorvino, the rest of Tinseltown should be a breeze. Reported by Isabella Ng and Stephen Short/Hong Kong and Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles
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