While actors like to hold forth about pursuing challenging roles, Tony Leung Chiu-wai is quick to say that’s not how he operates.
“I’m the kind of actor who loves to stay in my comfort zone,” said a jovial Leung, 63, speaking in English during a recent video call from his home in Hong Kong. “As you can see, in my past 20 years I mostly worked with one director, Wong Kar-wai. That makes me feel very safe.”
And yet, the star, whose longing, expressive eyes have enamored cinephiles in landmark romantic dramas like Wong’s “In the Mood for Love,” has recently taken on distinctly new characters in movies far from home.
The latest, “Silent Friend,” due Friday from the Hungarian director Ildiko Enyedi, is Leung’s first appearance in a fully European production. The story follows three people in different eras who encounter the same ginkgo tree. Leung’s character, Dr. Tony Wong, is a renowned neuroscientist on a work trip in present-day Germany.
Wearing a white sweater and glasses during the interview, Leung still resembled an elegant scholar. Behind him a display cabinet held a collection of exquisite vases. It’s a Zen space.
His selectiveness has nothing to do with the geographical location of the job, but instead his compatibility with the filmmaker. “I pick every project because of the person, not the story,” he said of agreeing to work with Enyedi. “I trust my instinct rather than my head.”
This approach has produced a remarkable body of work, much of which has been screening this week at Film at Lincoln Center as part of a career retrospective titled “The Grandmaster.”
Leung’s naturalistic acting style first began to take shape while working with the Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien on “A City of Sadness” (1989), where an actress without formal training impressed him. “I told Hou Hsiao-Hsien, ‘I want to act like her someday,’” he recalled.
He finally felt he’d achieved such realism when he saw his long, dialogue-free scene in “Days of Being Wild” (1991), his first film with Wong. His loyalty to the director was born.
When the director Destin Daniel Cretton reached out to ask him to play the antagonist in the 2021 Marvel action saga “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” a skeptical Leung took three months to consider whether to call back. “I always have self-doubt — ‘Am I good enough to do this?’ Especially such a big production, it made me a bit stressed,” he said.
One day, Leung’s wife nudged him to finally get in touch with Cretton. The two met on a video call that offered the actor little in the way of information about the story or his role.
“For Marvel movies, they cannot tell you anything. Everything is under wraps. What I knew from the director is that my character had many layers, and that’s it,” Leung said laughing.
Still, he agreed to work with Cretton solely based on how “laid-back” he found the director. Leung thought he could perhaps trust the filmmaker. “That’s the first movie I really stepped out of my comfort zone for,” he added. The experience, Leung said, reminded him of playing martial arts heroes with superpowers in Chinese-language wuxia television shows early in his career.
The video interviews Leung did to promote “Shang-Chi” inspired Enyedi to write “Silent Friend” with him as the lead.
“He had a real person-to-person interaction with the interviewers,” Enyedi recalled. “He wasn’t shielding himself. I felt a person who wasn’t just doing what is asked of him, but creating a meaningful moment.”
Had Leung refused the role, as he often does when approached, Enyedi would have rewritten the story and turned the character into a “goofy guy.” The director hoped to portray Leung with a vulnerability she didn’t think he’d been given the chance to tap into before.
She said she suggested a humble approach that included shaving his head “because I wanted to show what I had seen in him during those interviews, this monk-like focus and a tenderness towards the world.”
During their first meeting, Leung asked Enyedi about whether Buddhism had influenced the writing of “Silent Friend.” His character develops a spiritual bond with the ginkgo tree. That curiosity about the film’s philosophical intent pleased the director. Leung said she didn’t give an answer at the time. But Buddhism is important to her, Enyedi said, as is the study of plant communication.
After making the film, Leung, who is a Buddhist, found new appreciation for all life-forms around him. “I jog on the top of the mountain every day with all kinds of plants and trees. They’re not just plants to me now. They’re sentient beings. Maybe they have a conscience.”
To convincingly transform into a neuroscientist, Leung’s preparation was fiercely intellectual. Enyedi assigned him several heady books, including the eco-philosophy tome “Ways of Being” by James Bridle.
“I try to have a beginner’s mind on every movie,” Leung said. “I don’t treat myself as a professional actor. Really experienced actors miss a lot of things when they think, ‘Oh I went through it before, I know what it is.’ No! Every time is different.”
Another of Leung’s frequent collaborators, the Hong Kong action master John Woo, seconded Enyedi’s thoughts about the actor’s natural sensibilities. Woo, however, harnessed those attributes for high-octane pictures like “Hard Boiled” (1992) and “Bullet in the Head” (1990).
“Tony is just like me, very quiet and very introverted. He has such wonderful eyes that speak,” Woo said via email. “You don’t need to hear him say any words but with just his gaze, he is able to convey such a strong emotion.”
Leung’s eyes are often the focal point when people discuss his onscreen allure. Their piercing depth, the actor said, comes from a “difficult but happy childhood.”
“I didn’t quite talk to others, I tried to isolate myself because I didn’t want to talk about my family,” he continued. “I kept everything inside. I never showed emotion to anyone until one day when I learned acting, and I found a way to express myself without being shy.”
Playing someone else provided an outlet for his internal pain. “I have a lot of suppressed feelings and emotions, and that makes my eyes have a lot of things inside them,” Leung added.
He’s won dozens of prizes over 40 years, including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2023 from the Venice Film Festival. At the ceremony Leung was visibly moved. But ultimately accolades, he said, feel more like a burden.
“I never put any trophies in my house, I put all of them inside a cabinet. I don’t want to see them, because in every project I want to have a beginner’s mind,” he said.
In the final stage of his acting career, as he thinks of this period, Leung said he felt relaxed, especially after “Silent Friend,” which he described as an “inspiring journey” unlike anything he’s experienced before. Still, that doesn’t mean he wants to take on more roles now.
“I cannot say I just do it for fun, but if things come to me and I can help some really intellectual directors like Ildiko fulfill their dreams, then I’ll do it,” he said.
For all the credit Leung denies himself, those who know him well don’t hesitate to praise him.
“Everyone considers Daniel Day-Lewis to be one of the most talented actors who ever lived, and in Hong Kong we have Tony Leung, that’s how great he is,” Woo said.
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