SINGAPORE IDOL – Todayonline news Jan 15 , 2010
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FOR a Singaporean boy who scored an F9 for his Chinese ‘O’ Level exam (”I took it only once. I gave up!”), we’re pretty sure Leon Jay Williams has made his Chinese teachers very proud. And it only took 17 years.
The handsome 33-year-old Eurasian actor can be seen in cinemas speaking the language fluently in the latest Stephen Chow-produced romantic comedy Jump.
“There was no Mandarin before!” said the affable former model, laughing, when Today asked him how his command of the language was pre-fame.
“I took Chinese to its lowest level,” he joked, lapsing into a comfortable Singaporean-accented English.
“I was, like, super-failure, man! I couldn’t speak Chinese. Maybe like ‘wanton mee’, that kind of thing, but that’s it. None of my friends would speak Chinese to me because they would laugh at me!”
Well, all that has changed. After having been based in Taiwan for the last five years, the boy who was Mr Singapore 2001 has grown into the star of many a Taiwanese idol drama, including My Lucky Star and Green Forest My Home, playing the debonair, rich, pretty boy. And early last year, thanks to the film-makers looking to replace an embattled Edison Chen, Williams landed the part in Jump.
The Cinderella-esque, inspirational hip-hop movie, directed by Stephen Fung, stars Chinese actress Kitty Zhang as a naive farm girl who happens to also be an incredibly talented hip-hop dancer. Williams plays Ron, the rich (naturally) playboy businessman who ends up as her unexpected love interest.
“My agents told me there was a script for a Stephen Chow movie, want to have a look?” he said while in town to promote the film last month.
“We all grew up watching his movies, so I was like, ‘Yeah, okay!’
“Then I was told there was a catch and that I was a replacement. But I was still, ‘Yeah, sure why not?’ I liked the script. I was all up for it and I didn’t really care if someone else did it first or not. And Stephen (Fung) told me: ‘We don’t want another Edison. We want you because you fit the role.’
“Apparently, they went through the long process of looking at every Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwan actor to see who was an okay replacement. Lucky me!”
And what exactly were the producers looking for?
“I think, bottom line, they wanted somebody who looked good in a suit.”
Hey, looking good in clothes is a skill. So, with Jump in cinemas and two more movies confirmed (he plays a gangster in the next one), will we see another Singaporean foray into Hollywood waters a la Ng Chin Han?
“For now, my market is still in the Chinese industry. I am just starting to do movies,” said Williams. “If there are any English movie offers, be it Hollywood, independent and even Singapore movies, I’m very open to it …”
He paused, trying to find a word. Then he turned to his manager and said the word in Mandarin.
“Oh no, I am forgetting my English! There goes Hollywood then!” he laughed. “I’ll be the one playing the Chinese-speaking guy in a Hollywood movie!”
Now that would be making his teachers proud – the ones who taught Chinese, not English.
Jump is in cinemas now.