CENTRE STAGE
Award-winning actor and Prestige 40 Under 40 honouree LEUNG CHUNG HANG ruminates on the past year, the projects and goals he’s most excited about in 2024, and his thoughts on self-discovery, self-expression and self-doubt.
I was in primary school when I discovered my love of acting.
Each class in my year had to perform a play and my teacher chose The Phantom of the Opera. There was already a kid playing the Phantom, but we couldn’t find someone to play Christine, so I ended up dressing as a girl and portraying her. That was my first acting experience, and though I had to play another gender I found it fun and inspiring. I loved the attention.
Self-doubt is something I always deal with,
and I think it’s part of the job. Being an actor means you’ll always have to struggle with self-doubt. Whether you’re at castings or auditions, you’re constantly being judged, and once you’re on stage or the screen, you’re also being observed and critiqued by the audience. So a sense of insecurity and self-doubt is natural – and, to be very honest, I still haven’t found a proper way of dealing with it.
With every role I play, there’s a part of me put into that character.
Even if you aren’t putting your personality traits or habits into the role, which is something I find unavoidable, at the end of the day, how you interpret and analyse that character comes from your own personal perspective and past experiences. On the flip side, I also learn a lot from the characters I portray. Whenever I’m finished with a stage production or film shoot, there are always remnants of that role left in me that I take into my own life.
Zero to Hero will always remain an important milestone in my career,
but I also see it as just the beginning. Now I’ve done the film and gained more exposure and recognition from it, it’s about moving forward and looking for bigger and greater projects to work on. But yes, I think even when I turn 60 and look back at my career, Zero to Hero will always be one of my favourite memories.
I just finished a stage play
called Skylight, alongside Ivana Wong and Gardner Tse.
In the story, I play an 18-year-old, which is quite some distance from my actual age, so thank you Ivana for believing in me that I can portray someone so much younger! It wasn’t a massive role, but because of this age difference it was a unique challenge. I felt like I time-travelled back to my youth, so the experience was quite fun and interesting.
It’s hard for me to pick between the stage and film.
The more I’ve worked in both worlds, the more I think they’re entirely different from each other – almost like having two separate jobs. Even though I’m still acting, there are myriad differences between the two media, like production methods and schedules, so it’s become increasingly hard for me to compare and choose between the two. I love them equally.
Last year felt very segmented
and I can’t really piece it together. I can remember certain things I did throughout the year and the big landmark moments, but it’s difficult to put a thumb on how the entire year felt. It’s all a bit hazy. Like a smokescreen – you can sort of see it, but you can’t feel it.
In March, I’ll be playing a role in an adaptation
of August Strindberg’s classic play Miss Julie. I’m very excited about this role, because it’s a bilingual play and it’ll be the first time performing in English for me. There’s pressure, sure, but I’m also thrilled about the challenge.
My biggest goal for 2024 is to put more effort into living a happier life.
I’ve slowly learned that happiness isn’t something you feel just by sitting at home and doing nothing about it. It takes positive effort and work to achieve, and that’s the target I’m setting for myself this year.
Since 2001, when Richard Mille unveiled its
rst watch, the RM 001 Tourbillon, the Swiss brand has become a byword for innovation in the areas of design, technology and the development and use of the most advanced, high-tensile and lightweight materials. Among the latter is Carbon TPT, an incredibly strong and light composite that’s exclusive to the brand.
Given the signature tonneau case shape employed in the majority of its timepieces and the widespread use of skeletonised dials that puts the entire mechanism on display, it’s also fair to say that a Richard Mille watch looks and wears like no other. Indeed, it comes as no surprise that when establishing the company bearing his name, founder Richard Mille was less inspired by the traditional products of Switzerland’s watchmaking industry than he was by Formula 1 and sports cars – hence the tagline that continues to characterise his watches: “A racing machine on the wrist.”
That relentless urge to explore the limits of technology, and create watches that are at once highly accurate, perfectly functional and utterly unique in appearance, yet capable of withstanding the most severe forms of punishment imaginable, remains central to the company’s ethos. Yet being painstakingly built by hand in the smallest quantities, they’re also exquisite examples of the contemporary watchmaking arts, where traditional cra smanship are as highly valued as cutting-edge technologies.
Take, for example, the series of ladies’ RM 07-01 Intergalactic watches, at whose heart beats the skeletonised in-house CRMA 2 calibre, but with a dial centre and Carbon TPT bezel dotted with tiny diamonds and specks of gold that sparkle like the stars in a faraway galaxy. Or, exuding an interplay of golden light and shade, there’s the ladies’ RM 037, with a case constructed from ultrarare Gold Carbon TPT, a precious lightweight hybrid of the noble metal and Richard Mille’s own carbon composite, which is created with several layers of both materials set at an angle of 45 degrees, a process whose development took four years.
Gold Carbon TPT is also employed on another version of the RM 07-01, which, like the RM 037, features a dial centre of black diamonds set in gold that encircles a central onyx. Adding a further touch of individuality, the Carbon TPT surfaces on all the watches feature a distinctive waved damascene pattern unique to each watch.
Richard Mille may have set out in its aim to produce the world’s rarest and most sought-a er timepieces by defying convention, yet equally central to that ambition is an uncompromising focus on cra smanship and opulence. Technically advanced and yet exquisitely beautiful, this remarkable array of ladies’ watches could well represent the highest expression of that aspiration.