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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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