An inspirational tale

Stephen Chow's latest film - semi-autobiographical in its telling - recounts his failures and successes in show business, Xu Fan reports.

While shooting for Hong Kong director Stephen Chow's latest film, The New King of Comedy, actress E Jingwen found most of the days "miserable".

Every night when she opened the script to prepare for the next day's job, she says she usually read descriptions of her character getting beaten or scolded or humiliated. During film-within-a-film situations, for example, her character, who plays a background role, is kicked around by some characters. In another movie, she spent nearly 40 minutes inside a water tank on set.