She pips stars from other countries to star opposite Jason Scott Lee in Dance Of The Dragon
By Boon Chan, MEDIA CORRESPONDENT
FANN Wong will be starring alongside Jason Scott Lee in the English-language action romance Dance Of The Dragon.
The 36-year-old MediaCorp artiste beat actresses from Japan, South Korea, China and the United States for the role of Emi, a ballroom dancer.
Her previous big-screen outing in English was Shanghai Knights (2002), with action superstar Jackie Chan and comic actor Owen Wilson.
In Dragon, Fann plays Lee's girlfriend. The actor takes on the role of Cheng, a martial arts champion.
Lee, 40, is best known for starring in another dragon-titled movie, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993).
The character of Kwan, a young aspiring male ballroom dancer from China who comes between the two of them, has yet to be cast. Veteran actor Lim Kay Tong will play Kwan's father.
Writer-director Max Mannix tells Life! that they received over 130 resumes for the role of Emi and interviewed a shortlist of 30 to 40 actresses.
'The character's background is dance, and she is someone who has the tenacity to take it to the top and stay there consistently. You can see this from Fann's demeanour and how she carries herself,' adds the 42-year-old Australian.
This is the directorial feature debut for Mannix, who was mentored by acclaimed Chinese film-maker Chen Kaige on the latter's Together (2002), about the relationship between a father and his violin-prodigy son.
Dragon will be shot and produced in Singapore by Easternlight Film Productions, the Asian production arm of Los Angeles-based Arclight Films.