Description: Tony Leung Chiu-Wai investigates the rich, prolific career of an acclaimed leading man of Hong Kong and Chinese film and television: the star of more than 70 films and dozens of television series, and the only Hong Kong actor to earn the Cannes Film Festival's best-actor award. This book addresses the dynamics of media stardom in Hong Kong, mainland China and the East Asian region, including the importance of television series for training and promotion; the phenomenon of regional, transmedia stardom across popular entertainment genres; and cultural and political considerations as performers move among different East Asian production environments. Attentive to Leung's position in both East Asian and global screen cultures, the book addresses relations among acting, global stardom and internationally circulating film genres and acclaimed directors. Overall, this unique study of Leung - who the New York Times calls "one of the world's last true matinee idols" - illuminates challenges and opportunities for Chinese screen actors in local, regional and global cultural and industrial contexts.
Brief description: Martin Shingler is Senior Lecturer in Radio and Film Studies at the University of Sunderland, UK. He is the co-author of two books, On Air: Methods and Meanings of Radio, with Cindy Wieringa, (1998) and Melodrama: Genre, Style& Sensibility, with John Mercer (2004). He has also published essays on the Hollywood film star Bette Davis in the books Hollywood Spectatorship, eds. Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby (BFI, 2001) and Screen Acting, eds. Alan Lovell and Peter Kramer, (1999), and in Screen, the Journal of American Studies, the Journal of Film& Video, Theatre Annual and Film History. He has edited a dossier on Bette Davis for Screen (2008) and an edition of the Radio Journal (2008). He is co-editor, with Susan Smith, of the BFI Film Stars series, and author of 'Star Studies: A Critical Guide' (BFI, 2012).
Review Quotes: "Suave, debonair, intense, and sexy with a wry sense of humor, Tony Leung defines Hong Kong cosmopolitan "cool" on world screens. Mark Gallagher does a superb job of bringing neglected aspects of Leung's transnational stardom into sharp focus, and this book will be of enormous interest to anyone working on East Asian film, Pacific Rim celebrity culture, or Chinese masculinity in global media culture." --Gina Marchetti, Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Hong Kong