Tony Leung On His Career, Relationship With Wong Kar-Wai & Why He Felt “Lost” Before Working With The Director — Tokyo Film Festival

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.

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“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.

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.

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