SINGAPORE: He came, he saw, he conquered. That sums up Chow Yun Fat's first official visit to Singapore since 2000.
In a press conference held at the Shangri-La Hotel on Tuesday to promote his new film Curse of the Golden Flower, the 51-year-old Hong Kong actor had plenty of his legendary charm to spare.
Curse of the Golden Flower, a lavish period epic directed by Zhang Yimou, is set in the Tang Dynasty and co-stars Gong Li, Liu Ye and Jay Chou. It opens in Singapore next Thursday.
Gong was also supposed to be in town to grace the gala premiere of the film at VivoCity last night, but she had to fly home to Beijing instead because her mother is ill.
When Chow first stepped into the function room where the press conference was held, he looked tired, despite being dressed casually - and youthfully - in a white track jacket, khakis and sneakers.
But he soon warmed up, cracking jokes, flashing that trademark boyish grin and making every journalist in the room, regardless of gender or nationality, smile along with him.
In the film, Chow plays a ruthless Emperor who is mired in court intrigue, including betrayal by his Queen (Gong) and the Crown Prince (Liu).
Despite the weightiness of the role, the actor revealed that it was actually very light-hearted on set.
"Once the camera stopped rolling, I'd always be joking around. I never bring my character home with me once filming ends. In fact, I'm a very talented member of the cast because on set, I'm involved with everything that doesn't concern me," he said with mock seriousness.
As Zhang told newspapers in China, Chow once invited a street hawker onto the set to feed the cast and crew with barbecued kebabs.
He then paid for everything.
"The filming took six months because there was more fooling around, and barbecuing, than actual acting," Chow quipped.
Oh yes, Chow is quite the charmer. When a journalist from China started off her question by calling him Mr Chow, he interrupted her: "You can call me Fa ge (Brother Fa), you don't have to call me Mr Chow."
Later, when she revealed that she was from Dalian and grew up watching him in The Bund, he teased: "Dalian girls are the prettiest in China. Did you have a good impression of me in The Bund?"
While Chow seemed more comfortable answering questions in Mandarin than in English, his Cantonese accent made it necessary for him to be coached ahead of the film on how to pronounce Mandarin words properly.
He revealed that he had told Gong that the film set was beautiful, but had ended up being teased by her for mispronouncing bu jing (the Chinese word for set) as bao jing.
"She told me: 'You have such bad Mandarin, how did you ever become an actor?' So, if there's ever a chance, I want her to try acting in a Cantonese movie," he said.
"It's because she was so mean to me that I told the director that she had to die at the end of the film!"
Chow also seemed to have an easy-going relationship with Chou, who plays his second son.
The Taiwanese singer has a reputation for doing magic tricks, a habit he continued on set whenever he wasn't doing a scene.
"Jay stole so many of my female fans because of his magic tricks and he refused to stop when I told him to. I'm the Emperor, yet all my subjects left me alone because they had all flocked to him. So, I told the director to kill him off, too!"
What Chow didn't enjoy was the scene where he had to whip his youngest son with a belt. Apparently, the child actor playing the role - Qin Junjie - was so intimidated by Chow's star status that he didn't dare speak up when it hurt.
"It was the saddest thing to hit the kid. When he moved and I accidentally hit his face, he still said it didn't hurt. In Chinese culture, it's the norm for parents to beat their children. But it's not in the West, so maybe the movie will get an R rating," he joked.
Recently, it was announced that Curse of the Golden Flower will be China's entry in the Best Foreign Language Film category at next year's Academy Awards.
Chow, for one, seemed rather nonchalant about its prospects.
"As an actor, when I've finished acting, I'm done," he said. "If the film makes it to the Oscars, I'm happy because I get a free ticket to the show. I get to stay at a first-class hotel and eat good food.
"I don't care if it wins or not. The film company and the director would be concerned about such things, but not me. I'm easy. Why put so much pressure on yourself?"
Similarly, when a reporter raised the question of whether he considers his career in Hollywood a failure - Chow has done only four films in the nine years he has been there - the actor displayed the same attitude.
"It's up to you what you think of my work so far. I think all of them have been good. It doesn't mean that just because you've made a lot of movies, it means the movies you've made are good ones."
When the signal came from Chow's minders to wrap up the press conference so that he could have lunch, he protested: "But these journalists haven't had lunch yet."
He took one last question, before thanking everyone profusely - something stars rarely do.
"Thank you for all your support all these years. I'm a very lucky man. Let's hope the next time I'm here, we can get in the mood for love."
