Maggie Cheung Quotes

Many people have the misconception that a pretty girl can only be a ‘vase’ in a film. I want people to consider me not just to be a film star, but someone who knows about acting.

My first dream was to be a hairdresser, then a model.

I used to be an actress. After being away from film sets for 12 years, I no longer deserve to be called an actress!

Well first of all, in Hong Kong, I think they're still interested in the action films and I think in some ways in action films we still do it better than the Americans. I think that's the first interest that people have still on Hong Kong movies and, you know, the world is smaller now and it's time to open your eyes to other things.

I have no regrets as an actress, even though I have been one for 15 years and don't think that all the films I've done are that good.

To be honest, I really think a lot of Hong Kong actors/actresses aren't interested in European movies.

No matter where I'm going, I feel like I'm leaving something behind. Every time I get on a plane, I cry. The flight attendants on Cathay Pacific must think I'm mad.

I have nothing against commercial films, but if you’re in a movie, [and] you feel the script and everything else about it has no meaning – it’s just another production that the boss can add to his list – I don’t think you should do it.

You experience a lot more pain than normal people -- your mom dies, your dad dies, your boyfriend chucks you, you live in the street, and you're really going through these emotions. You're trying to know what it feels like to watch a man die in front of you, as if you've really lived it. Once that division is gone, it gets blurry -- you look back at a shoot and think, was I really that sad because in the film my boyfriend didn't like me -- or was it something else, something real?

If a film does well, other people want to work with you.

Comedies are written for men, and the women just stand around. But I do like the audience reaction to comedies. When they laugh, I feel good. You don’t get that sort of pleasure from making dramas.

I have done all kinds of scripts, but I prefer working on dramas. They give me room to really act. Comedies are fun to work on, but I don’t get much satisfaction from them.

At that time, she didn’t have much ambition for her acting career, because of the kind of roles she was offered. I noticed that, if given a lot of dialogue, she would become very nervous; then I cut most of her lines, so she could concentrate on her body language, which is something she was very good at.

I think I started to have thoughts to really want to be serious about my work when I was about twenty five and I just kind of started to look into that direction and moved into it. But it didn't seem as though it was going anywhere because, you know, films without action or comedy are rare to find in Hong Kong, especially if the main character is a woman. But along the way, I've had a few good breaks.

We were in Los Angeles. And we could go anywhere. No one had any idea who I was.