Sandrine Pinna, whose Chinese name is Chang Jung-jung (張榕容), greeted me at the office of her agency Jet Tone Films (澤東電影), the company founded by Wong Kar-wai (王家衛). Beautiful in just jeans and a T-shirt, Pinna wore make-up that hardly did justice to her 22-year-old face. A recent graduate of the Department of Radio, Television and Film at Shih Hsin University (世新大學), the actress has already garnered acclaim for her talents, as evidenced by a Golden Horse nomination for her role in last year’s adolescent romance Miao Miao (渺渺) and her winning the best actress category at the 2009 Taipei Film Festival (台北電影節), this time for her role in Cheng Yu-chieh’s Yang Yang (陽陽).
Pinna, whose father is French and whose mother is Taiwanese, entered the limelight at a young age, beginning work as a model when she was 10 years old. She has since been featured in numerous television commercials, soap operas and films, all of which have contributed to her maturation as a young actress. Last year resulted in an especially bountiful harvest for Pinna, as 2008 saw the actress star in seven short and feature-length films, including Candy Rain (花吃了那女孩), Intoxicant (匿名遊戲) and The End of the Tunnel (天黑).
During our interview, Pinna struck me as a young actress in the midst of a transition, who has yet to adjust to her role as a newly crowned movie star. Sounding slightly uneasy and occasionally tripping over her own words, she was nonetheless often very candid in appraising her career. She also spoke at length about her experience making Yang Yang, a film that features a character-driven, coming-of-age story that was tailor-made for Pinna, who plays a university athlete born to a Taiwanese mother and a French father.
Taipei Times: Were you the kind of kid who liked to daydream and imagine yourself playing different characters?
Sandrine Pinna: I was an only child so I could get a bit bored around the house. I would play with my Barbie dolls for five hours a day and dress them in clothes I made from toilet paper. I was also fond of inventing stories and playing all sorts of characters, like a pirate, a grandmother, a man or a woman. Having watched me playing like this when I was growing up, my family was very supportive of my choice to become an actress.
TT: When did you decide to become a serious actress?
SP: I was a senior in college after making Miao Miao, and I thought that I might as well turn this acting thing into a career, since I needed to find a job after graduation anyway.
TT: Most of Yang Yang was shot in uninterrupted, long takes. What kind of challenges does this style of filmmaking pose for actors?
SP: I often call our cinematographer the magical Jake [his name is Jake Pollock], because I could hardly feel his presence when shooting the film. He and his camera felt almost like one of us [the actors].
Acting in the film requires total concentration. If we have two scenes to shoot today, we have to be in the mood and be feeling the emotions of those scenes for the entire day. If you forget your lines, the whole crew has to start over and redo the scene. You might end up wasting lots of film if you’re not in the zone.
TT: Did the director tell you in the beginning that the film would be shot in long takes?
SP: No, actually not. During rehearsal I would be told that this or that scene would be shot in one take. But it wasn’t until the last three days of shooting that it suddenly hit me that this whole film would be shot in long takes.
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