Crouching Tiger producer Bill Kong and top model Louise Wong revive Canto-pop legend Anita Mui's story in a film that reveals her last days and celebrates her life
Read an interview with producer Bill Kong and top model Louise Wong about creating new film––Anita––which celebrates the life of the late Hong Kong Canto-pop icon, Anita Mui. Anita is released in Hong Kong cinemas on Friday, November 12, 2021.
When Louise (Wong) got the call from Edko Film executive director Bill Kong that she had been chosen, out of thousands of candidates, to portray Canto-pop icon, Anita Mui, in her biopic, she bought a ticket to Thailand immediately. But it wasn’t to celebrate: she was overwhelmed. “My hands were shaking. I was very scared,” Wong says. “I stayed in the hotel for one week and spent the first two days crying. I didn’t know what to do.”
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That she looks the part is without question. The fashion model, who is the only Hongkonger to have won the Elite Model Look Asia Pacific regional contest, which she took in 2006, and who has since been a favourite among brands including Shanghai Tang, Louis Vuitton and Giorgio Armani, has features—the sculpted cheekbones, snub nose and deep-set eyes—that eerily conjure up Mui’s face.
But to play the late diva takes more than looks. “Mui is unreachable in so many ways; singing, dancing and acting,” says Wong, who makes her acting debut in the simply titled Anita. “I’m nowhere near. I was venturing into a whole new field.” Her nerves are understandable: nearly two decades after her death from cervical cancer in 2003, Mui remains a legend. She is one of the only three Hong Kong icons to have a bronze statue erected in the Avenue of Stars; the other two are Bruce Lee and the cartoon character McDull.
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