Kao Meng-jie (高盟傑) spent four months behaving as if he were autistic to prepare for his role in Chang Tso-chi’s (張作驥) When Love Comes (當愛來的時候). He spoke in a slow, drawling manner, limited his body movements and never looked at the person he was talking to.
“When I went home, my dad asked why I was acting so strangely. I told him ‘I am making a movie,’” the actor said. “‘It’s just a movie, for Christ’s sake!’ my dad said. ‘Do you have to be like this all the time?’”
One year later, Kao is vying for a Golden Horse Award (金馬獎) in the Best Supporting Actor category for his performance as the autistic uncle to the film’s teenage heroine. The awards ceremony is scheduled for this Saturday.
Photo courtesy of Swallow Wings
The 29-year-old actor has come a long way since his first Golden Horse-nominated performance in Chang’s 2002 The Best of Times (美麗時光). After appearing in that movie, Kao, aged 20, married and became a father. He worked at a hostess bar to support his family and later moved to Kinmen, where he worked as a house painter and ran a breakfast shop.
“But I never, ever forgot about movies and acting,” he said.
Kao, whose father ran an agency for background actors, embarked on a career in acting in his teens with appearances in television dramas. Aged 17, he made his debut appearance on the big screen as a young thug who tries to rape a character played by actress Lee Kang-yi (李康宜) in Chang’s Darkness and Light (黑暗之光, 1999).
“I couldn’t hit her or rip her clothes off because everything that happens in movies is fake,” Kao said. The director took Kao aside and gave him an acting tip.
“‘You are an actor! You are an actor! You are an actor!’ he said while slapping my face. Then I just went wild and got the job done,” Kao said.
For their next movie, The Best of Times, Chang confiscated Kao’s cellphone, demanded that he stopped hanging out with his “good-for-nothing friends” and rented him an apartment so he could concentrate on preparing for his role.
“It wasn’t until then that I started to believe the director was serious about me being a lead actor,” Kao said.
The former troublemaker was hailed as a rising star for his portrayal of a reckless teen who gets involved with a gang. Golden-Horse nominations in the Best Newcomer and Best Supporting Actor categories followed. He didn’t win.
“The higher your expectations are, the worse you feel when you fail,” Kao said. The actor subsequently left the movie business.
Despite a stable domestic life, the husband and father longed for more. Frustrated, he drank heavily.
One night, an inebriated Kao telephoned Chang’s film studio, and the director answered the phone.
“I let it all out. I complained, cried and whined,” said Kao, now divorced. “So I started calling him every time I was drunk. I must have bugged the hell out of him.”
Chang recruited Kao to play a young father in How Are You, Dad (爸,你好嗎, 2009), a compilation of short films about 10 different fathers and their relationships with their children. Kao said he had no problem understanding his character, who regularly returns home drunk from his hostess bar job and sobs uncontrollably while gazing at his sleeping baby son.
The actor, however, found playing an autistic man in When Love Comes stressful. He spent weeks with autistic patients and slowly transformed himself, starting with his physical appearance and gestures.
“Getting in and out of character are the two most painful parts,” said Kao, who is still struggling to shake off some of the habits he picked up for the role, like biting his nails and playing with his fingers.
When asked about his relationship with Chang, Kao recounts a scene in When Love Comes in which his character vents his frustration by hitting himself. The actor was so enthusiastic that crew members cried out: “Stop! He will beat himself to death!” Chang came over and asked: “You alright? OK, let’s do it again,” Kao said.
“He [Chang] never shows emotion in front of me. He always tries to act cool, but he takes care of my troubles without me knowing it,” Kao said. “He has been a family member to me, a father figure. Now he is more like my mom, you know, he’s started to nag a lot.”
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50