[2009.09.30] ZHOU XUN, LI BINGBING DISPUTE RUMOR

courtesy of takungpao.com

The Huayi Brothers' near 100 million yuan 60th anniversary National Day Chinese espionage film THE MESSAGE will open in Hong Kong officially on October 15. The cast including Huang Xiaoming, Zhou Xun, Li Bingbing, Zhang Hanyu and Alec Su Yau Peng yesterday along with director Chen Kuo-Fu arrived in Hong Kong for a press conference at the W Hotel. The stars shared the difficulties of the production and gave an advanced toast for box office success. The event scheduled a question and answer segment but the questions were only limited to the film.

The lead actresses yesterday dressed up for the event. Zhou Xun was full of spirit when she discussed her performance. "The performance in the film was rather hard to take. Young people at the time suffered torture and abuse that were very hard to imagine. After the performance I also found the role very hard to leave. I have a lot of respect for these young people. The beautiful life that we live in now is completely due to their effort."

With daring performance in the film, Li Bingbing before the shoot was rumored to be at odds with Zhou Xun. Yet yesterday they attended the press conference like a pair of twins. They often whispered and chatted. They even held hands while posing for photos to demonstrate that their relationship was not as outside described. Zhou Xun's THE MESSAGE performance was extremely daring. Zhou Xun said, "I always suspected whether the events in the film were real. I took the initiative to ask the director for a comprehension of the story background." In one scene Zhou Xun was required to perform in the nude. She said, "At the time Huang Xiaoming removed my clothing and measured every inch of my body. The director never yelled cut until I was yelling with all my might, one with my character and felt the lost of feminine dignity. We mentally already had chemistry. Although we didn't rehearsed but the director let us perform freely. I at the time had concerns but I couldn't think too much. We could only try to do our best."

Huang Xiaoming played a Japanese soldier in the film. He received two pages of Japanese dialogue. In order to play the character well, he spent over a month to translate over 20 pages of lines and did a lot of homework. He said, "I would look at them in the car or on the plane." Huang Xiaoming played a big villain who needed to handle all of the enemies in the film. He said, "The director wanted me to play very strong so my look had to coordinate. I had to cut my hair and shave." Huang Xiaoming expressed that he was not worried that fans would dislike him because he played a villain. He said, "Being a bad man is even better. Now people aren't that silly and know how to differentiate that this is acting."