Takeshi Kaneshiro Information

The director, Zhang Yimou was the main attraction for me and as for all that martial arts stuff I hardly know anything it is all mainly down to the choreographer.

How much training did you have to do?

I practised basic swordplay for about one month and then the action director worked out the scenes mainly whilst we were on set. I always looked after my face.

What appealed to you more the story or the action?

The elements of the love story appealed to me more and once again the director Zhang Yimou also drew me to the project.

Would you like to try out different films like say some big Hollywood movies?

I would like to try out many kinds of films but I don’t think that there are a lot of parts for me in certain movies particularly in Hollywood.

Do you think that Asian cinema is finally going global in a big way?

Yes, well the Chinese mainland has opened up and so the western world is getting to see more and they are pumping more money than before into a lot of foreign films.

Do you have more fans on an international scale than in your home country?

Well let me put it this way, I don’t have a fan club so I couldn’t really say.

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.

The star of Zhang Yimou's breathtaking House of Flying Daggers confesses to never having set out to become a celebrity while at school - only really deciding to 'give it a try' when someone suggested it to him.

"I just started because someone asked me to," he told me, during a recent interview at London's Dorchester Hotel.

"They said, 'you want to be a singer', and then I thought 'yeah, I'll try'. I don't know what this is. I'll just open the box and jump in."

Since 'jumping in', however, Takeshi has barely had time to look back.

"I think the very beginning was, I did some commercials as a model, and then started as a pop singer and then started acting," he laughed, turning to his translator to check that his English made sense.

I started doing movie work coincidentally but then I found that, I think it's all about creation. Whether you're writing a song or acting in a film it's all about the process of creating something. And I think that process is very interesting. It's not just acting. I'm just as interested in directing or camera work or any other of the new technologies of how they make movies, of how they make dreams. It's very interesting.

How much training was involved for House of Flying Daggers?

I'm not at all qualified for action movies. For this one, I practiced just the basics of using a sword for about a month. But the only thing we could learn was the basics. We didn't know what kind of action would be involved in the role. The action director likes to arrange or think the scenes on set so every day we arrive and wait for him to choreograph the scene and then we learn and we shoot.