On her first visit to Taipei, top Japanese actress Hitomi Kuroki showed her elegance with a black strapless dress. The 42 year-old actress said her secret to staying beautiful is "working hard everyday."
Although she sometimes responds to questions with irrelevant answers, Kuroki used her sweet smile and good manners to satisfy the Taiwanese press during her swift, two-day visit promoting the new horror movie Dark Water.
Known among her Taiwan fans for Paradise Lost (1997), a film about extra-marital affair in which she performed in explicit sex scenes, Kuroki this time brings a scary ghost story to her fans. "The team of Hideo Nakata and Koji Suzuki is a golden match, and was the first thing that intrigued me," Kuroki said.
PHOTO: WEI JIE-CHIH, TAIPEI TIMES
The former is Japan's No.1 horror film director and the later has been nicknamed Japan's Stephen King. Together they made the worldwide hit horror movie Ring (1998), and its three equally popular sequels.
In Dark Water, Kuroki plays a mom who suffers from fear and an unsuccessful marriage, bringing up her 6-year-old daughter alone, and plagued by visions of the ghostly presence of a drowned girl. Omens are everywhere -- the damp patch on the ceiling where the water keeps dripping, and in the kitchen where a tuft of black hair gets washed down the drain. But in order to protect her daughter, Kuroki confronts the ghost, even climbing up the haunted water tower.
"The scariest scene, but also the most touching scene is when I am stuck with the ghost in the elevator," Kuroki said, revealing bits of the story. Nakata's horror film excels in atmosphere rather than revealing flesh, blood or scenes of killing. So Kuroki manages to maintain her elegance even when distressed by the ghost. "It's not only a horror film, but also a film about motherly love," she said.
Shooting a horror film, it is unavoidable to follow folk customs for protection, Kuroki said. "I put salt around the corners of the studio, [to expel evil spirits], also I wore two amulets," she said. "Even after shooting, I become more aware to check if the water was clean." Horror films are of course not the only choice for a top-salary actress like Kuroki. She has done a TV series with popular Taiwanese-Japanese star Takeshi Kaneshiro. And she said she aimed to one day star in action films.
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