ARTICLE
5 Notable Films by Hong Kong Actress-Singer Charlene Choi
By Flora / 03 Apr 2019 (Wednesday)
Hong Kong actress Charlene Choi is known by many to be one-half of Cantopop duo Twins with Gillian Chung, but Choi started her showbiz career as an actress even before debuting as a singer. Seen as a versatile actress in the Hong Kong film industry, Choi has won numerous awards both as a singer and actress, and played a variety of roles both on the big screen and TV series.
Here are 5 films which we picked out that truly shows how talented Choi is as an actress.
Funeral March
Funeral March marked her film debut in Funeral March as the leading lady alongside Eason Chan. She played an uptown girl with cancer, befriending a young funeral director to help her with her funeral processions.
Her performance earned her rave reviews from critics and earned her a Best New Artist nomination at the 21st Hong Kong Film Awards.
New Police Story
Although Choi was only a supporting character in the police action film, New Police Story, she left an impression as the cute and kind-hearted cop, Sa Sa. The film went out to break box office records in Hong Kong and was loved by fans from all over the world. The film won numerous awards including Best Film, Best Actor (Jackie Chan), Best Supporting Actor (Daniel Wu) at the Hong Kong Film Awards, as well as Best Action Choreography at the Golden Horse Awards.
Diary
Her breakthrough role came in 2006 with Oxide Pang’s psychological thriller ‘Diary’ starring Choi, Shawn Yue and Isabella Leong. Choi played a psychotic murderer who killed her boyfriend thinking he cheated on her. A contrast from her usual bubbly, girl-next-door role, Choi earned many filmed award nominations for her performance and received the Best Actress award at the 11th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival.
Sara
In 2015, Choi took on a more provocative role in Sara where she plays the title role of a sexual abuse victim who has an affair with a much older man (Simon Yam) during her adolescence. Later, she starts working as an investigative journalist, and stumbles across the story of a young prostitute (Sunadcha Tadrabiab) in Thailand. For the role, Choi had to strip and act out intimate scenes with Yam, to which she shared that she would be willing as long as it is important to the storyline.
Choi’s hard work paid off, as she went on to win numerous awards including the Osaka Asian Film Festival and Hong Kong Film Awards.
The Lady Improper
In her latest film, The Lady Improper, the 36-year-old actress takes on her biggest challenge yet - starring as a divorced woman who experienced sex for the first time with a newly-hired young chef (Chris Wu). She revealed that there were limits as to how much she wanted to show on screen, which director Tsui Shan Tsang tailored the scenes to her requests.
Choi has received yet another nomination at the Osaka Asian Film Festival.
The Lady Improper, rated R21, opens InCinemas 4 April 2019!