SHE IS a leading lady of Asian cinema, and the star of more than 75 films. But for two days, she went almost unrecognised in Scotland - until she walked down the Royal Mile and encountered a group of stunned Chinese tourists.
Yesterday, the actress Maggie Cheung was back at the centre of attention in Edinburgh for the launch of Cinema China, a UK-wide celebration of Chinese films.
The event opened with Centre Stage, the film in which Cheung portrays the tragic Chinese star of silent film, Ruan Lingyu. Over the next ten days, 20 classic films from 80 years of Chinese movie-making will be screened in 20 cities across the UK.
Cheung, 42, told how she had turned down 30 to 40 roles since she appeared as a drug-addicted aspiring singer in 2004's Clean, winning the best actress award at Cannes.
"It's actually very hard to take on something right now," she said. "I'm going through a phase of wanting to have a life. I do read film scripts, but I just need something that is so 'wow'."
Cheung is best known in the West for the likes of the martial arts action film Hero; the director Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love, and Clean, which was directed by her ex-husband, the French director Olivier Assayas.
In Asia, the former Miss Hong Kong may be better known for playing the girlfriend of a police detective opposite Jackie Chan, but she has won best actress awards for a dozen films at festivals ranging from Hong Kong and Hawaii to Cannes and Berlin.
Cheung arrived in Edinburgh without the entourage of a major star. She was travelling with her boyfriend, whom she declined to name because they are not a "golden couple", she said. She went walking on Gullane beach and shopping in Edinburgh. "I bought a couple of kilts which I hope to wear before I leave," she said. "I am hoping to turn kilts into fashion."
Cheung lived in Kent between the ages of seven and 17 after her family moved back to the UK, and she now divides her time between Hong Kong and Paris.
She came to the festival because she was "totally curious about Edinburgh", she said. "I've always imagined Scotland to be something like this. But it's not until you are here that you breathe the air, feel the light."
She said Scotland should lead the way in relaxing laws to allow more Chinese into this country. Chinese people have only recently been allowed visas to travel, she said, but would-be emigrants find it hard to reach Europe or the United States.
"It's good for a country to have many cultures. That's what gives life to the place and brings new things. If Scotland starts, I'm sure England will follow," she said.
Chinese movies still run into rows over censorship, with one recent Chinese production granted permission for a showing at the Berlin Film Festival only after a series of cuts.
In a Communist country, rules won't change overnight, she said. "They are like a parent. When they say no, it's no," she said, adding that some Chinese directors exaggerate the problems to get press attention in the West.
Cheung appears today in a film "masterclass" as part of the festival. "I don't feel I have any right to teach," she said. "I can talk about my experience, how films were made, how they happen. It's the passion and the acting side of it, of making films."
Cheung began making films in Hong Kong in the 1980s when the economy was booming and actors were offered a film "every other day", she said. "These films usually had no budget, no trailers - we were eating lunch on a doorstep, my make-up was done in the street, we changed costumes in a café lavatory."
There were no rules in the trade, and directors would lock actors and crew in the studio until a scene was finished.
"I devoted my life to cinema from the age of 19 for a good 20 years. All of the 1980s up until the mid 90s, I didn't have a life. I was making ten films a year, sleeping in the studio, sleeping in cars.
"Now I have made something out of my career, but I feel if I don't start living for me now, it's a bit late," she said.
The cycle of making a film, she said, from meeting the director to doing your make-up, to promoting it round the world, was all too familiar. Now, if she couldn't make a film she could be proud of - one to add to her "collection" - she would rather not make one at all.
