TOUGH COOKIE
Former teen idol Stephy Tang speaks to Discovery about her Hong Kong Film award-nominated performance in The Empty Hands. By KEVIN MA
Fifteen years ago, Stephy Tang got her start as a member of the Hong Kong pop group Cookies. Her acting career began with idol films like Nine Girls and a Ghost, My Sweetie and Dating Death, before she moved on and accepted more mature roles.
But no one could predict what she would achieve in 2017. In a single year, Tang turned out three performances that showed ambition, daring and tremendous growth. In exploitation action film Husband Killers, she plays a professional assassin out to exact brutal revenge on her philandering husband. In art house drama Somewhere Beyond the Mist, she plays a pregnant police detective investigating a murder while struggling to care for her dementia-afflicted father.
But her biggest breakthrough came with Chapman To’s The Empty Hands. Tang plays Mari, a karate teacher’s daughter who gave up the martial art during childhood because of a fear of failure. Stuck in a dead-end relationship with a married man, Mari is forced to pick up karate once again after her late father (played by Japanese actor and real-life karate dojo owner Yasuaki Kurata) leaves half the family home to his former student. Excelling in both the psychological and physical challenges of the role, Tang received some of the best reviews of her career and her first Hong Kong Film Award nomination for Best Actress.
The Empty Hands isn’t a traditional action film, but it still required the 34-year-old to train in karate for six months. She says this role, her most physically intense yet, was something she’d been waiting for. ‘I’ve wanted to do an action film for a long time, but the opportunity never came my way,’ Tang tells Discovery. ‘I was interested in this project early on because it’s both an action film and a very inspirational film, and I’ve always wanted to do a female-driven film.’
Yet Tang doesn’t want audiences to see the film with assumptions about the action genre. Inspired by Johnnie To’s Throw Down, The Empty Hands is an offbeat film with eccentric characters and serious emotions. ‘I think viewers need to get in a very peaceful state before seeing it,’ she says. ‘Don’t expect an action film or a lot of excitement. Just see it with no expectations.’
The Empty Hands premieres on Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon flights as a worldwide airline exclusive