Post by SamIAm on May 20, 2005 11:36:52 GMT -5
Website: The HK Actors Index
URL: www.brns.com/hkactors/pages/page38.html
Takeshi Kaneshiro/Gum Sing Mo/Jin Cheng Wu/Aniki Jin
Born on 10/11/73 in Taiwan
One could possibly pinpoint the beginning of Hong Kong’s movie infatuation with longhaired pretty boys on Takeshi. Beginning in the mid-90s he brought his soulful eyes and sensitive good looks to Hong Kong and was soon elevated to an Idol status among teenage girls and having his face plastered across innumerable glossy magazines. Admittedly Ekin Cheng was on the scene before Takeshi, but he didn’t really achieve idol status till his Young and Dangerous films. The difference for me though between Takashi and the idol boys that have followed is that Takeshi is actually very talented.
When he turns to Brigitte Lin in Chungking Express and tries talking to her in four different languages (i.e., Cantonese, Japanese, English and Mandarin), it gives a hint as to his multi-cultural background. Half Japanese and half Taiwanese Chinese, Takeshi grew up and attended a predominantly English-language International School in Taiwan and began appearing in commercials at the age of fifteen. A few years later he began making music and released six albums between 1992 and 1993. This brought him to the attention of filmmakers in Hong Kong and it wasn’t long before he was starring in films.
In fact his first film was the sequel to The Heroic Trio, The Executioners, in which he plays a messiah like figure in a futuristic world – sort of a different kind of idol. He followed this with a small role in Mermaids Gets Married, but his next film shot him into the stratosphere with his charming turn as a lovelorn policeman in Chungking Express who flirts with a mysterious femme fatale but ends up only eating plates of chef salads and chips plus cleaning her shoes while she sleeps. Director Wong Kar-Wai clearly liked his performance enough to cast Takeshi in his next film – Fallen Angels in 1995. In one of his most bizarre roles, Takeshi plays a mute character who breaks into various business establishments after closing to re-open them for business.
Christopher Doyle -- the cinematographer of Fallen Angels (and quite a few other notable films) -- wrote the following about the sometime Prada model in his “Angel Talk” (that functions as an unofficial photobook of that 1995 Wong Kar Wai film):-
“Takeshi became an actor somewhere between the shooting of Chungking Express and Fallen Angels.
He used to be just another pretty face, and a bit of a “Diva” if you’d have asked me at the time. An “idol” who usually tried to find the easiest way to get through a scene or the cutest way to do a shot.
He surprised me this time by showing that he’d learned somehow that an actor has to “give” and not “protect his image” or himself. Somewhere he’d come to realize that we all had his and the film’s best interests in mind. That acting is about “truth” and that film making is about “trust”.
Fallen Angels couldn’t be the way it is without Takeshi’s exuberance and increasingly inspired ideas [One of which got him giving a dead pig a massage!]. He went out on a limb this time and his courage really paid off” (1996:34).
Around these two classic films, he -- who sadly does not seem to have received any acting awards or even nominations thus far -- also appeared in a number of lesser ones – the amusing Young Policemen in Love, Ching Siu Tung’s Dr. Wai in ‘The Scripture with No Words’, Don’t Give a Damn, Yes Sir, School Days – but by 1996 he was becoming fairly selective in his film selection and for the most part he only appeared in high profile films from that time on. <br>
Some of these are Lost and Found (which established him as a UFO film favorite plus made him a popular choice of leading man opposite Kelly Chan (with whom he would later co-star with in Anna Magdalena and Lavender)), The Odd One Dies (a quirky Milkyway Image crime drama), Downtown Torpedoes (whose good-looking young stars are among the most capable of their generation), The Sleepless Town (a Hong Kong-Japan co-production helmed by the director of Lost and Found, Lee Chi Ngai, which has his character getting involved with another femme fatale and Japan-based ethnic Chinese gangsters along with the yakuza) and Tempting Heart (a romantic film directed by a fellow Taiwanese talent in Sylvia Chang that was partly filmed in Japan as well as Hong Kong). Takeshi -- who does not seem to have appeared in a single Hong Kong film in the year 2001 (but hopefully has not given up on the HKSAR’s movie industry) -- brings a certain lost sweet innocence to all of these films that can be very effective.
In recent years, Takeshi has also made an effort to break into the Japanese market – he speaks Japanese fluently – and has appeared in Japanese films (like Space Travelers), television series and tv commercials. In 1998, he also co-starred in the unfortunately not very much liked Too Tired to Die with Mira Sorvino.
URL: www.brns.com/hkactors/pages/page38.html
Takeshi Kaneshiro/Gum Sing Mo/Jin Cheng Wu/Aniki Jin
Born on 10/11/73 in Taiwan
One could possibly pinpoint the beginning of Hong Kong’s movie infatuation with longhaired pretty boys on Takeshi. Beginning in the mid-90s he brought his soulful eyes and sensitive good looks to Hong Kong and was soon elevated to an Idol status among teenage girls and having his face plastered across innumerable glossy magazines. Admittedly Ekin Cheng was on the scene before Takeshi, but he didn’t really achieve idol status till his Young and Dangerous films. The difference for me though between Takashi and the idol boys that have followed is that Takeshi is actually very talented.
When he turns to Brigitte Lin in Chungking Express and tries talking to her in four different languages (i.e., Cantonese, Japanese, English and Mandarin), it gives a hint as to his multi-cultural background. Half Japanese and half Taiwanese Chinese, Takeshi grew up and attended a predominantly English-language International School in Taiwan and began appearing in commercials at the age of fifteen. A few years later he began making music and released six albums between 1992 and 1993. This brought him to the attention of filmmakers in Hong Kong and it wasn’t long before he was starring in films.
In fact his first film was the sequel to The Heroic Trio, The Executioners, in which he plays a messiah like figure in a futuristic world – sort of a different kind of idol. He followed this with a small role in Mermaids Gets Married, but his next film shot him into the stratosphere with his charming turn as a lovelorn policeman in Chungking Express who flirts with a mysterious femme fatale but ends up only eating plates of chef salads and chips plus cleaning her shoes while she sleeps. Director Wong Kar-Wai clearly liked his performance enough to cast Takeshi in his next film – Fallen Angels in 1995. In one of his most bizarre roles, Takeshi plays a mute character who breaks into various business establishments after closing to re-open them for business.
Christopher Doyle -- the cinematographer of Fallen Angels (and quite a few other notable films) -- wrote the following about the sometime Prada model in his “Angel Talk” (that functions as an unofficial photobook of that 1995 Wong Kar Wai film):-
“Takeshi became an actor somewhere between the shooting of Chungking Express and Fallen Angels.
He used to be just another pretty face, and a bit of a “Diva” if you’d have asked me at the time. An “idol” who usually tried to find the easiest way to get through a scene or the cutest way to do a shot.
He surprised me this time by showing that he’d learned somehow that an actor has to “give” and not “protect his image” or himself. Somewhere he’d come to realize that we all had his and the film’s best interests in mind. That acting is about “truth” and that film making is about “trust”.
Fallen Angels couldn’t be the way it is without Takeshi’s exuberance and increasingly inspired ideas [One of which got him giving a dead pig a massage!]. He went out on a limb this time and his courage really paid off” (1996:34).
Around these two classic films, he -- who sadly does not seem to have received any acting awards or even nominations thus far -- also appeared in a number of lesser ones – the amusing Young Policemen in Love, Ching Siu Tung’s Dr. Wai in ‘The Scripture with No Words’, Don’t Give a Damn, Yes Sir, School Days – but by 1996 he was becoming fairly selective in his film selection and for the most part he only appeared in high profile films from that time on. <br>
Some of these are Lost and Found (which established him as a UFO film favorite plus made him a popular choice of leading man opposite Kelly Chan (with whom he would later co-star with in Anna Magdalena and Lavender)), The Odd One Dies (a quirky Milkyway Image crime drama), Downtown Torpedoes (whose good-looking young stars are among the most capable of their generation), The Sleepless Town (a Hong Kong-Japan co-production helmed by the director of Lost and Found, Lee Chi Ngai, which has his character getting involved with another femme fatale and Japan-based ethnic Chinese gangsters along with the yakuza) and Tempting Heart (a romantic film directed by a fellow Taiwanese talent in Sylvia Chang that was partly filmed in Japan as well as Hong Kong). Takeshi -- who does not seem to have appeared in a single Hong Kong film in the year 2001 (but hopefully has not given up on the HKSAR’s movie industry) -- brings a certain lost sweet innocence to all of these films that can be very effective.
In recent years, Takeshi has also made an effort to break into the Japanese market – he speaks Japanese fluently – and has appeared in Japanese films (like Space Travelers), television series and tv commercials. In 1998, he also co-starred in the unfortunately not very much liked Too Tired to Die with Mira Sorvino.
