Dubbed the "Asian Dakota Fanning", 15-year-old Chinese actress Xu Jiao has no reason to be envious of her American counterpart. Having started her rise to fame in the critically acclaimed CJ7, Xu Jiao took her career to another level by crossing over the Yellow Sea to the Korean Peninsula. and starring in Mr Go, which opened internationally, including in Thailand, in early August. Promoting the movie on her first trip to Thailand, Xu Jiao was up before dawn, landing at 4am. She had a quick taste of the local culture (apparently pad thai) before facing an intense and stressful day before the cameras, flanked by journalists whose questions stay pretty much the same no matter the country.
"It is my first time in Thailand and unfortunately I will not have time to really visit the country. But, I really enjoyed the dish that I ate earlier.
"It was sweet and sour, all at the same time, with noodles and shrimps," she says.
With more than half of her short life spent in the film industry, she managed to taint her Chinese rigour and professionalism with a childish smile and a touch of shyness, making her moves and words refreshingly genuine.
It was also obvious that she has learned a few tricks of the trade as she spontaneously posed for Brunch.
"Being an actress at the age of 15 is quite unbelievable to me. I owe a lot to talent and hard work, but I have to admit that a big part of the career I have now comes from luck," says Xu Jiao, who appeared extremely calm, patient and polite throughout the interview.
Luck has undeniably played a huge part in her short but active career, but her work ethic is impressive. "I was already performing in school plays in primary school and my teacher advised all of us to take part in the casting in town for a new film, CJ7 _ which turned out to be a real success on the big screen. The auditions took place in the summer, so I decided to give it a try as I had nothing else to do."
She recalled having to audition alongside more than 1,000 other children for a role in the film. She was surprised that after not hearing anything back from the producers for several months, they called her up for costume trials with the director. She eventually landed the lead, as a boy.
"I was trying girl's clothes when the director asked me to try out boys' costumes and cut my hair. To be honest, I was quite reluctant to have my hair cut that short as I'm very girly," she says. "I'd even say that despite all the impressive special effects that I had to deal with in Mr Go, playing the character of a boy was the most challenging part I've had."
In recognition of her success in carrying off the difficult cross-dressing role in CJ7, she was awarded the prestigious Hong Kong Film Award for Best New Performer for her performance in her first film. That's an impressive way to start a career. Interestingly, actor and director Stephen Chow, who played her father in CJ7 , won the same award in 1989, almost a decade before Xu Jiao's birth.
Since her debut in CJ7, Xu Jiao has had various opportunities to collaborate with foreign directors and actors, but Mr Go was a real challenge as it is her first non-Chinese speaking film.
"I've worked with Hong Kong and Taiwanese film crews before, but I was still very surprised to be contacted by a Korean director to be part of a Korean film with an exclusively Korean cast _ except for me and the gorilla," she says, smiling. Like the character she portrays, she had to move to another country, adapt to a new culture and learn Korean.
"I had to prepare quite a lot for this film in terms of language. I came three months before the shooting started in order to learn the language. Filming in South Korea was very different from what I was used to," she says.
Chalk that up to the language barrier. ''Usually, on a two- or three-month set, the crew gets quite close and gets on well pretty quickly. But for Mr Go, although I was on the set for almost nine months, I don't think that I had the opportunity to talk to everyone. That's quite a shame,'' she says.
''I sometimes felt lonely, but other cast members, as well as the director, always cheered me up in the saddest moments.'' This bit of sincerity was a welcome hint that she's managed to stay true to herself and refrain from the rose-tinted speeches taught by PR teams about the great atmosphere of the film set.
Mr Go is inspired by a 1980s Korean comic book called The Seventh Team, and there is absolutely no mention of a Chinese character. So why would they choose a Chinese actress? The cynical among us would point to the fact that Mr Go was co-produced by a Chinese media company, Huayi Brothers. Mr Go's director, Kim Yong Hwa, didn't deny that this was a factor. ''Knowing that the film was going to be co-produced by a Chinese company, it was totally acceptable and logical to have a Chinese actress as the lead,'' he said.
The choice of Xu Jiao was more than obvious. ''The Chinese producers advised me about three girls: Xu Jiao was the first and only one I met. We had a thirty-minute conversation and although she did not talk much, I knew straightaway that she was the one who would be able to portray the character of Wei Wei. She was cute and natural,'' says the director, who had seen her previous work.
''Cute and natural'' is pretty much the opposite of the character she plays. ''I do not have much in common with her [Wei Wei]. The only shared feature is that we both have quite strong personalities. But then again, she has quite a bad temper and is quite impatient, while I would say that I am more of a relaxed kind of girl. We are similar in terms of maturity. We both had to grow up a bit more quickly than most people our age, but for different reasons. Mine are much more fortunate than hers,'' says Xu Jiao.
Director Kim praised her natural acting abilities: ''It was my first time directing an actor through a translator and I have to admit that it was not the simplest thing to do. I was always scared that my instructions were getting lost in translation.
''Directing Xu Jiao turned out to be easier than I thought. I owe a lot to her innate talent. She is truly gifted,'' he says, adding that dealing with all the special effects was also a challenge for her.
Kim decided to direct the film about a gorilla and his personal baseball coach after watching a documentary about Christian, a lion that, after being raised by two Australian friends for a year, was released into his natural habitat but could still remember his former owners during a reunion.
''Human beings are after all animals. With Mr Go, I wanted to recreate this strong bond between humans and other animals. Xu Jiao has successfully made the relationship between Wei Wei and Ling Ling, the gorilla, plausible and believable,'' says Kim.
Xu Jiao's performance was so believable that she received backlash from Chinese audiences who did not understand her character's harshness towards the poor animal. Incidentally, the film is number one at Chinese box-offices.
''At first, Wei Wei felt like she was a mother to Ling Ling, taking care of him, feeding him, but she gradually realises that she had actually been protected by the gorilla from the start,'' explains Xu Jiao.
When looking at the young starlet, you get a sense that she is as reserved with journalists as she is with her entourage. It looks highly unlikely that she will end up in shame and ruin as many Hollywood child stars do. Despite her sudden fame, she seems to have remained very down to Earth.
''When I moved to my new boarding school two years ago, I could feel that some of my classmates did not dare to approach me. Little by little, they realised that I was as normal as any other teenager. I might be currently promoting a film around Asia, but two days ago, I was still watching movies and going to sing karaoke with my friends, like any girl my age would do.''
On the other hand, Xu Jiao acknowledges a few drawbacks to having the kind of responsibilities she has to deal with at such a young age. ''Back home, it is summer break now, and instead of spending most of my time with my friends and family, I have to share my time between them and my work.
''Travelling so much can be quite stressful, but I really enjoy meeting new people and discovering new cultures.''
Xu Jiao takes her studies seriously, and says attending university is definitely part of her plan. She would like to earn a degree that would link her current interest in acting with a subject that broadens her horizons. She has a keen interest in drawing and Chinese civilisation, and is planning on going on to study in the US. But only for study _ she has no dreams of Hollywood and Chinese domination in that other City of Angels. At least not yet.
'MR GO' DIRECTOR TAKES CG SERIOUSLY
Having started his directing career 10 years ago with Oh! Brothers, Korean director Kim Yong Hwa has completed his biggest work so far with Mr Go. The latest project started off with an ambition to prove that the ''Asian film industry is as capable as Hollywood of producing high-quality and impressive CG [computer graphics]''. From the initial idea of portraying a human being's intense relationship with animals until he'd carried out his grand vision for its special effects, it took Kim three years until he made the final cut.
''Filming took almost a year, while dealing with CG was constant,'' he says. ''It took us that long because handling this kind of technology requires a lot of precision. We had CG experts who worked on Transformers guiding us all the way through the process. As a close-knit team, we started everything from scratch. There was a lot of testing, designing and re-designing to eventually come up with the result we all worked so hard for.'' When asked about his inspiration for the character of the gorilla Mr Go, Kim jokes: ''I guess that we have very similar personality traits.''
