Veteran Hong Kong actor Tony Leung passed through the Tokyo Film Festival this afternoon, where he led a masterclass session following a screening of 2046, his sixth collaboration with filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai.
Leung’s appearance onstage was brief but dense, with the actor largely digging into the early inception of his career and how he first hooked up with Wong Kar-Wai, with whom he has since made seven feature films.
“When I first met Wong Kar-wai, I was stuck. I didn’t know what to do because my acting wasn’t getting any better,” Leung told the packed audience inside Tokyo’s Hulic Hall.
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Leung said at the time, he was working with Wong Kar-Wai on the 1990 feature Days of Being Wild, but he was struggling to land his character.
“I was working with Maggie Cheung. And Wong Kar-Wai was watching my acting and knew what wasn’t great about it,” Leung said. “Maggie could finish a scene in 2-3 takes while I had tens of retakes. I thought maybe I wasn’t good at acting, but Wong Kar-Wai told me I had a lot of technique to my acting that I didn’t need. So he told me to disassemble the things I knew.”
Leung said that when he saw the final cut of Days of Being Wild, he could, for the first time, see his complete potential as an actor.
“Wong Kar-Wai is an amazing director. He can draw out things in actors, so I decided I wanted to work with this director, and now it’s been 20 years.”
Leung described Wong Kar-Wai’s working style as “unique,” explaining that the director often conceals his entire screenplays from his performers.
“Wong Kar-Wai does have a script, but he doesn’t show it to us,” Leung said. “All the actors are aware of the story and understand their characters, and Wong Kar-Wai gives very clear directions about what to prepare, but we don’t get any direction on how the story is going to unfold.”
Leung added that Wong Kar-Wai’s uncommon way of setting up his projects always made shooting feel like an “adventure” into the unknown.
“He wants to create a lot of leeway on the set. He gets to the set and sees each person and the cameras, and he might make a change based on the circumstances. That’s why he wants that leeway,” Leung said. “When we get too much information as actors we start to prepare, and Wong Kar-Wai doesn’t want that to happen.”
Across his decades-long career, Leung has starred in over 100 features working across Asia and, more recently, the US. When asked what he was thinking of tackling next, he responded: “Next year, in Germany, I am taking part in a European film. I have been preparing for eight months. I need to read a lot of books and do a lot of research, so I’m looking forward to that film.”
The Tokyo Film Festival runs until November 1.