Isabella Leong Talks About Her Role in 'Mummy' Multi-hypenate talent Isabella Leong is the latest Asian actress to catch Hollywood’s eye. She reveals how she scored her first role in America.
At a recent interview in Los Angeles to promote the latest installment of The Mummy movie series, stunning Hong Kong beauty Isabella Leong most certainly turned some heads. As she entered the interview room, journalists from around the world, whispered to each other remarking how lovely the 172cm-tall star looked.
Born in Hong Kong and bred in Macau, Leong has her Portuguese father and half-Chinese-half-English mother to thank for her stunning features and elegant figure.
When she addressed the media, everyone was pleasantly surprised that the Cantonese-speaking actress spoke fluent English.
Apparently, the trilingual beauty, who turned 20 barely a month ago, speaks Mandarin as well.
And in her latest movie, she gets to speak “yeti” to a trio of “abominable snowmen” in one scene!
Leong makes her Hollywood debut in the action adventure The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which features a stellar cast including Brendan Fraser, Jet Li and Maria Bello. In the movie, she portrays mysterious tomb guardian Lin who is the daughter of sorceress Zi Yuan, played by Datuk Michelle Yeoh.
The movie revolves around explorer Rick O’Connell (Fraser) who has to combat a mummy awakened from a 2,000-year-old curse and threatens to plunge the world into his merciless, unending service. You know, your regular tomb raider fodder.
Everyone at the interview was very impressed with Leong’s command of English and offered her compliments. “Thank you very much. It’s really hard because I just learnt it last year and we spent four months (filming) in Montreal where no one could speak Cantonese or even Mandarin. It was so difficult because they were all speaking to me in English, although they did try to slow down. Right now, I’m learning English every day ... still working on it. I think I just have to speak it more often.”
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor might be Leong’s first American film but she has done much work in Hong Kong, filming a dozen movies and recording half a dozen albums as well as modeling for countless products. Hence, her calm exterior, despite being barely out of her teens.
How different is filmmaking for her in the United States?
“It’s totally different. In Hong Kong, we have to do four or five films or even more in one year. But here, we took six months to do this Mummy film. It’s totally different! I think I prefer the American style. As an actor, there is plenty of emotion involved and it’s so tiring. But I prefer it like that.”
How exactly did Leong get role? “I think Universal saw the movie Isabella (a Peter Kam film). That film went to the Berlin Film Festival (in 2006, and went on to win the Silver Berlin Award). So, they came to me and asked me to audition. I did it twice.
“The first time, it wasn’t really good because I just had two days to prepare for my role. It was really hard for me the first time. But, I’m really happy that Rob (Cohen, the director) gave me a second chance to do it. I had enough time to prepare for it then.”
Leong was the last to audition in Hong Kong for the role of tomb guardian Lin. There were five or six girls before her but Leong was the only one who agreed to a kissing scene with co-star Luke Ford (who plays Alex O’Connell, the son of Fraser’s character). Ironically, it was the serious actress with several award-winning films under her belt who agreed to the scene. The rest – who were pop stars – all said no to the kiss!
“I remember when we first met. We had to do the kissing scene. It was weird because we didn’t know each other.
“But as an actress, you can’t think too much, you just have to do it. It was an opportunity for me, so we just worked it out.”
Cohen really wanted Leong for the role and was excited to introduce her to Ford. “Rob just came up to me and said, ‘Isabella, could you kiss Luke?’ Because I’d already read the script, I knew what I will be doing. It’s the fight then the kiss. So, I said, ‘Yes, definitely, I’ll kiss Luke.’ ”
Leong’s role as Lin accords her substantial screen time and is set to take her acting career to a more global scale. While she is passionate about acting, the same cannot be said for her singing and modelling.
“I’ve stopped singing. It’s hard to handle being both a singer and actress. It’s too tiring. Right now, I just want to focus on acting,” said the Canto-pop artiste who has a handful of albums and EPs to her name, among them Isabella, I am Isabella, To Find Love and Say Goodbye ... Luisa. Leong confessed: “Seriously, I didn’t enjoy it a lot. It was unbelievable.”
As the European journalists were quite perplexed as to why she would continue doing something she did not enjoy for so long, Leong explained that she was bound by a contract.
Leong joined Hong Kong’s Emperor Entertainment Group when she was 12 and began as a model. Then, she started singing and released an album when she was 16. Following that, she turned to acting and had her first cameo in a TV series titled Hong Kong Heartbeat, before she ventured into films.
“In Hong Kong, we have to do everything – singing, acting, modeling. I did modeling before, but I didn’t like it very much. I made six to seven albums. I can’t believe it myself.”
In 2005, Leong made her film debut in The Eye 10, then went on to star in Bug Me Not (2005) which got her nominated for Best New Performer at the 2006 Hong Kong Film Awards. Her leading role in Isabella (2006) was the turning point in her career as it won her the Best Actress title at the 2007 Hong Kong Film Awards, the Best New Performer at the 2006 Golden Bauhinia Awards and the Directors’ Week Award for Best Actress at the Fantasporto 2007.
“Isabella changed my life. When this film came out and went to the Berlin Film Festival, I realized that I wanted to be an actress. Before that, I never really thought about it.”
She went on to make Oxide Pang’s Diary in 2006, for which she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress at the 2007 Hong Kong Film Awards (yes, she was a nominee in the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories in the same year!)
Last year, Leong co-starred in the arthouse film Spider Lilies – a Taiwanese lesbian drama – alongside pop singer/actress Rainie Yang. Spider Lilies was shown at the Berlin Film Festival and won the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film.
For now, Leong is content to remain in the United States doing promotions for the The Mummy, travelling and learning English, which according to her is “the most important thing”.
With such a plum role for her Hollywood debut, where will she go from here?
“I look forward to playing a prostitute or a junkie!”
