SINGAPORE
- Singapore pop star and television actrress Fann Wong proudly extends a slender
arm to show off her battle scars: a cut, a burn, a bruise.News
16 June 2002
Shanghai Knights:
Fann Wong, the girl with one foot in Hollywood
(Interview)
SINGAPORE
- Singapore pop star and television actrress Fann Wong proudly extends a slender
arm to show off her battle scars: a cut, a burn, a bruise.
| ' |
They are just minor injuries really," she says.
The marks are proof positive that the waif-like singer is starring in a film with her idol, the martial arts legend Jackie Chan.
For the past few months Wong has been in Prague starring as Chan's little sister in the upcoming Shanghai Knights, a sequel to the 2000 Hollywood blockbuster Shanghai Noon, starring Chan and Owen Wilson.
Back in her hometown of Singapore for two days to perform in a charity concert, Wong squeezes in an interview while having her hair and makeup done.
Wong is an unusual beauty — and doesn't need much makeup — but she suffers everyday insecurities. Small-boned and slender — 1.7 meters (5.6 feet) tall and 50 kilograms (110 pounds) — Wong still agonizes over her weight.
"The
camera magnifies everything. You look 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) larger on the
screen," she says.
A few years ago she even took slimming pills, she says, but stopped when she developed low blood pressure and now she jumps rope to keep fit.
The daughter of a tailor and a housewife, Wong, 30, has done more than a dozen Chinese language movies for Singapore television and has released four albums of Chinese pop songs.
She's a hot commodity here, with several big advertising contracts under her belt including Emporio Armani and Bella Skin Care, but she's not well known outside Asia.
Her role as Wilson's love interest in Shanghai Knights might be her breakthrough role. For now, she's just having fun working on her first big-budget, Hollywood film.
Kissing Owen Wilson was "not so bad, not so bad at all," Wong says. But she denies any off-screen romance with the blond Texan movie star — or anyone else for that matter.
"I am single and happy," she says with a laugh.
Wong's part in the upcoming buddy flick is not a leading role she admits and she has spent a lot of time just "hanging out" in Prague.
The film is set in Sherlock Holmes-era London but directors are shooting much of it in Prague, which with newly built replicas of Big Ben and the British Parliament, will pass for London.
Revealing that the Hollywood-bound actress is still a hometown girl, Wong says she likes to spend her down time text messaging friends and family back in Singapore.
