HK actor Simon Yam received the Cinema Legend Award at the 27th Singapore International Film Festival last week for his work in both commercial and arthouse productions. Evelyn Yureports from Singapore.

The veteran Hong Kong actor, Simon Yam Tat-wah, was booked on an afternoon flight to Singapore but had it changed to a morning one instead. He was on his way to receive the Cinema Legend Award at the 27th Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF), and wished to be immersed in "a million tons of sunshine" as soon as he landed in the tropical country, hence the change.

At 61, Yam is amazingly energetic. He wore a chic denim jacket with ripped jeans when we met at the presidential suite at the Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore. Only a few strands of gray hair on the sideburns seemed to give away his age. As we settled down for the interview, Yam bit into a bar of chocolate to stock up on energy. He had 12 interviews lined up on the afternoon of Dec 3, before he would go up on stage to receive his award.

Then working round the clock is not new for Yam. He began as a model and started acting on television in the mid-1970s. Yam signed up with Hong Kong Television Network (TVB) and acted in a number of television series. He joined the film industry in 1987 and has been featured in over 200 films, best remembered for the roles of villains and gangsters he has played in Hong Kong movies.

"Many actors at that time were graduates of TVB's acting class. Yet I knew next to nothing when I started acting. I stayed on the sets for a very long time, observing how other people acted. Even today I would stay on until the end, watching other actors playing their roles even it's not my scene," said Yam.

In his latest film, The Tenants Downstairs, Yam played a morbid landlord who spies on his tenants and then tries to disrupt some of their lives. The landlord became mentally unhinged when his daughter was murdered by a serial killer years ago.

To prepare for the role Yam said he talked to several doctors, trying to understand the nature of the "gravest pain" suffered by human beings. An orthopedist told him it was most painful to have one's bones broken, a gynecologist said dysmenorrhea could cause massive pain to a woman, while a psychologist observed memories inflicted the most pain on human beings.

Yam said he tried imagining how the agony of losing one's daughter might make a monster of a man. To get a better grasp of the role he was playing he tried imagining a back story involving the father and the daughter. Ultimately he urged the director to include a scene showing the father escorting the daughter to school, which became the coda of the film.

Life lessons

Yam lost his father at 14. His father was a member of the marine police who was shot at and killed by a colleague who had lost his mind after a brain injury in 1969. His older brother Yam Tak-wing followed in their father's footsteps and signed up for a job in the armed forces. He rose to the position of the Deputy Commissioner of Hong Kong Police.

In what is probably his most-acclaimed performance, Yam played a stern father in the movie Echoes of the Rainbow. The performance earned him a best actor award at the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2010.

"There are many traces of my father in the character. He used to beat me for no reason, even if I was late for dinner only by a minute, or got negative remarks in my school paper. Somehow I realized this was the man's way of showing love," said Yam, in a mellow voice, when he came backstage after receiving the Cinema Legend Award.

Founded in 1987, SGIFF is the largest and longest running film event in Singapore. They chose to confer the prestigious honor on Yam as he had "proved to be one of Asia's most versatile actors participating in both blockbusters as well as independent arthouse cinema", as stated in the publicity brochure.

Hong Kong film director Herman Yau, who handed over the award, said Yam has a very easygoing nature and took care of everybody on the set.

Yam is both amiable and candid during interviews. For instance, he said he did not draw a "bottom line" while doing sex scenes in the several A-rated films he had acted in, that he had no problems with on-screen intimacy, whatsoever.

He also openly shared his views regarding the new generation of Hong Kong actors, saying they seemed to lack the intense and genuine passion which actors of his own generation had for films. Most of today's actors, he seemed to suggest, got distracted by the many temptations associated with life in show-biz.

On a lighter note, Yam told reporters about buying his daughter a treadmill recently, which was in fact meant to be a hint to his wife Qi Qi, a well-known model, that she should get more exercise.

His wished to act in more light-hearted movies in the next five years, the sort of films his 12-year-old daughter might enjoy watching.

And no, he has no plans of retirement, says Yam.

"My passion for films is unabated Think I will act until I am 70 or 80."

Contact the writer at

evelyn@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 12/09/2016 page7)