From: In the Mood For Love

It is a restless moment.
She has kept her head lowered,to give him a chance to come closer.
But he could not, for lack of courage.
She turns and walks away.

That era has passed.
Nothing that belonged to it exists any more.

He remembers those vanished years.
As though looking through a dusty window pane,
the past is something he could see,
but not touch.
And everything he sees is
blurred and indistinct.


Tony Leung: I never dreamed of being an actor, it was just by coincidence. I was a salesman selling home appliances before I became an actor. Suddenly one day I saw on TV they are looking for new talents and I said to myself: "Why not? I’m still young, I can try something else. They have a training class that will teach you how to act for a year, so why not give it a try?" So I get in to the training class and I find a way to express my own feelings and own emotions in front of others without feeling shy. It’s a kind of relief for me because actually I’m quite shy and I don’t know how to communicate with people.

I don’t know why, maybe because of my background, my father left me when I was a kid, so I stopped trying to communicate with people. I dared not talk about my family, I didn’t want to tell my classmates that I didn’t have a father. So I didn’t know what to do when I was a kid, so I just kept everything inside, very much like the character in In the Mood For Love, very good at hiding my emotions and I never cry in front of others. So it’s a little bit sad when you’re a kid, so when I grew up I still didn’t know how to communicate with people and I never cry in front of others. So when I became an actor I found a way to release all my emotions, it’s a kind of therapy. That’s why I enjoy acting so much, you can be somebody else, you can cry but nobody knows that’s your feelings. They will think "Oh, you’re doing that character very well", but actually that’s my feelings, that’s my own emotions.