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Why isn't Maggie Cheung a Hollywood star? By SUSAN DOMINUS (New York Times) Updated: 2004-11-16 14:52 At one point, a suited man from the hotel came over and politely apologized
that he had to ask Cheung to put out her cigarette, a request that appeared to
cause him some anguish. Cheung smiled sweetly at him, her uptilted face a vision
of feminine charm, and asked if, Oh, just this once, she might be able to, since
no one else was around. His face turned bright red, and it looked as if it might
kill him to insist, but insist he did, at which point Cheung sweetly put it out.
Forthright with women, she can't help being aware of the effect she has on men.
Assayas, a boyish 49-year-old well known in France for his cerebral films,
says he was struck by Cheung's charisma the first time he saw her in person.
"The first time I met her was on a jury at the Venice Film Festival," he said
when I met with him at a cafe near his home in Paris. "We were introduced, and
right away I saw in her something I had never seen in another actress. In
retrospect, I don't know if it was love at first sight or something more
serious." He paused, distracted by what he'd said. "I guess it doesn't get much
more serious than love at first sight," he mused, then laughed at himself and
continued. "I thought she had something that is fascinating, something I
associate more with stars of the past -- she projected something entirely
striking but also incredibly modern, like an up-to-date version of an
old-fashioned film star. I realized I'd never once made movies with movie stars.
I'd made movies with actresses." He cast Cheung to play a version of herself in
the 1996 film "Irma Vep," an independent movie that riffed off the French
classic "Les Vampires." The two fell in love and married in 1998, then grew
apart and separated two years later.
On one of the last nights of the Toronto festival, Assayas joined Cheung and
several other cast members from "Clean" at a restaurant for dinner. Everyone sat
a bit awkwardly alongside a tall table, and the topic eventually turned to the
early days of Assayas and Cheung's work together. Because he was drawn to her by
her star quality, Assayas said, he was surprised to find in Cheung a performer
whose charisma was completely uncoupled from the Western notion of celebrity,
which holds that great performances demand indulgence and coddling. To the
contrary, there's a diligence -- almost a dutifulness -- common to Cheung's
circle of Hong Kong performers, most of whom put up with the industry's grueling
production schedules. Cheung has raced her way through some 75 films, making as
many as 11 in one year during the height of the Hong Kong film industry in the
late 80's. "You sleep in cars, you sleep on the set, anywhere you can," she
said. Working on one of the "Police Story" films with Jackie Chan, she had to
run through a stack of bed frames, several of which collapsed on her head,
sending her to the hospital for 17 stitches.
That evening, Cheung, who wore her sunglasses even in the dark bar, was
dressed, as usual, in black, her hair pulled off her face in a ponytail, tall
boots adding height to her already long-limbed frame. As she headed out of the
bar, a little on the early side because of her jet lag, the American director
Harmony Korine, in town for the festival, was heading in, and he made a beeline
for the actress, his head bobbing at about sternum height on Cheung. "Ms.
Cheung, I just wanted to tell you how much I admire your work," he said, and she
smiled graciously, the very picture of cinematic royalty, before heading out
onto a Toronto street where no one took note of who she was.
he claim that no Asian actresses are making it big in Hollywood inevitably
invites counterexamples: Lucy Liu, a star of "Charlie's Angels," for one, or
Cheung's friend Michelle Yeoh, the former Bond girl. There's no denying that
these women are stars, but they're stars of a specific sort: action heroes,
variations of the old Asian warrior legends, exotic in both provenance and look.
Penelope Cruz can play the romantic love interest opposite Tom Cruise, her
accent nothing more than another adorable accouterment; Halle Berry, for better
or worse, can get a film like "Catwoman" green-lighted. It's nearly impossible,
however, to name a studio film in which an Asian-American actress plays the
leading role, or the love interest, or even the love interest's best friend,
outside of specifically Chinese films like "The Joy Luck Club."
Part of this disparity can be attributed to simple demographics:
African-Americans represent 13 percent of the American population,
Latino-Americans 14 percent, while Asians account for about 4 percent. But
filmmakers don't even represent demographics faithfully, argues Jeff Yang, the
author of "Once Upon a Time in China," a book about Chinese cinema. "Even in a
movie set in the greater Bay Area," he says, "where one out of three people is
Asian-American, if you just look at the background scenes, the bystanders, there
are almost no Asians at all. That's not just politically incorrect -- it's
fundamentally, demographically, incorrect."
Janet Yang (no relation to Jeff), who produced "The People Vs. Larry Flynt"
and "The Joy Luck Club," contends that geography and history place Asian
actresses too far outside the range of the girl next door, practically a
prerequisite for female superstardom in this country. "Asia has been perceived
as the enemy for many years," she adds. "Look at all the past major wars --
World War II, Korea, then Vietnam. There's this crazy, deep-rooted bias." At the
time she produced "The Joy Luck Club" in 1993, Yang thought the film was a
breakthrough; now, she says, studios are even less likely to finance such a
film, given the absence of a name-brand, non-Asian star. Richard Hicks, the
president of the Casting Society of America, says he proposes Cheung to
directors with some regularity: half the time, he says, logistics get in the way
-- "can we get her here by Thursday?" -- but just as often his clients aren't
interested in casting an Asian.
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