Hong Kong star power

Miss Chinese Montreal 1992 Christy Chung
is Asia’s top leading lady

>> by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

If you saw her strolling around her native Brossard, you might be excused for not recognizing Christy Chung as one of the planet’s most famous movie stars. For the last eight years, Chung, 31, has rocked Asia as a top leading lady, but she still goes largely unrecognized when visiting her sister and her parents, ethnic Chinese who came from Vietnam when her father came to study in the 1960s and stayed on as a federal government engineer. Chung says she’s still surprised by the twist of fate that has vaulted her to the top of the Hong Kong star firmament since 1993, earning her top billing in films alongside such megastars as Jet Li.
“I never thought I’d become an actress,” she says. “I really feel that everything came like a dream. Sometimes I’m sitting down and I can’t believe it. I feel that I was very blessed and have this destiny laid down to me. It’s amazing.”
Chung’s serendipitous rise to glory started in 1992 when, as a marketing student at École Polytechnique, her boyfriend brought her along on a visit to Miss Chinese Montreal organizer Ruth Koo Lam. The boyfriend was trying to land a singing gig at the upcoming pageant but Lam’s eyes were on Chung, whom she eventually persuaded to enter the contest.
After bagging the crown, Chung was entered into the Miss Chinese International Pageant in Hong Kong. At the time, Chung, who had once failed an audition as a VJ at MusiquePlus for being “too shy,” had just been hired as a TV weather reporter at Radio-Canada. “That was a point in my life—to decide whether to stay in Montreal and be a weather girl or go to Hong Kong and try to make my fame,” she says.
Chung’s wanderlust won out. “It was my first trip away. I had never left Montreal. I was in awe of the buildings, I was just happy to be here,” she says in a phone interview from Hong Kong. And to her surprise, she won the bigger title. “I never thought in a million years I’d win the title because at that time I couldn’t speak Cantonese. When they called my name, I didn’t realize it. The girl sitting next to me had to explain, ‘You just won the title.’”

Westernized woman makes good

Although Chung’s film experience consisted of a mere 10-second appearance as a gum-chewing prostitute in Love and Human Remains, she found herself immediately getting top billing in Hong Kong films, a rarity in a system that generally requires actors to apprentice in afternoon soaps. “I was a foreigner, a Westernized woman, and here I was suddenly doing movies. It was pretty awesome considering that I didn’t speak the language at all,” says Chung, who reports that her language skills have improved somewhat since.
After making such Asian crowd pleasers as Bodyguard From Beijing and Aces Go Places, Chung—who shuns limos, fancy clothes and makeup and dreams about “driving a Winnebago around the Maritimes”—found herself hounded by the gossip-mongering Hong Kong press. Her spot in the Asian film totem pole is apparently high enough to merit wild rumours about her romantic life, as well as getting tailed around Montreal by Hong Kong reporters, one of whom was apparently unprepared for our cold climes. “I felt sorry for him,” she says. “He wasn’t used to the weather and he got very sick.”
Eventually Chung returned to Montreal with now-ex-husband Glen Ross to give birth at the Royal Vic—during the infamous Ice Storm no less—and, amazingly, she says she would do it again, power outages and all. “I’m definitely going to go back if I have another baby. Canada has the best services and I just feel very relaxed there,” she says.
But Chung soon learned that the Hong Kong tabloids don’t consider giving birth a brilliant career move. “They couldn’t comprehend why I went to have a baby. They thought I was at the top of my career and now I’d have to just shoot mother roles. I’m trying to change this misconception. I feel that mothers don’t lose their appeal, that’s why I’ve been working hard for three years. Even though I’m a mother, I’m still the same,” she says.

Kicking typecasting ass

Her attack on the maternal stereotype has entailed a break from her squeaky-clean past roles for more off-the-beaten path stuff, including the Thai-shot film Jan Dara, set for a February Canadian release. It’s about a young man’s doomed quest to find deeper answers through sensual relief. Chung plays the boy’s temptress in a role described by the Bangkok Post as “magnificent,” particularly in what it calls “the now-famous I’m-so-hot-please-rub-ice-on-my-sexy-back sequence.”
Chung herself describes the film as “an emotional roller coaster,” in which she portrays “the sophisticated, mercenary stepmother who’s confused about herself.” Unlike her other 20-odd films, Chung’s role in this flick involved lots of “dramatic interpretation,” as well as putting on weight and learning some Thai dialogue. “In Asia we never had a chance to see these kinds of stories. It’s very controversial and taboo.”
But Chung also wants to administer a few screaming high kicks in the future, as she bemoans that her martial arts are featured in only two of her flicks. “I love fighting. A lot of actors here don’t. It’s very hard. You get very tired and all bruised.” Although Chung squandered an invite to star in Rumble in the Bronx because she was busy shooting a film where she plays a helpless rich chick, she will be appearing in Jackie Chan’s upcoming Highbinders, set to be the most expensive Hong Kong production ever. “All the female actors who work with Jackie complain of getting bruised and falling off trains, but I’ve always wanted to work with him.”
Chung, who was voted the 2000 “sexiest Asian celebrity” by Singapore FHM magazine, says part of her heart remains in our city under the cross in spite of her being the focus of seemingly unlimited Hong Kong adulation. Though she “can’t stand the minus-30 degree days,” Chung misses the poutine and outdoor terrasses. “Montreal is very trendy,” she says. “The energy is really very good. Montrealers are so hot. I tell people if you want to go to see the beautiful people, don’t go to Toronto or Vancouver, go to Montreal.” :