SUBMITTED BY LClem

December 2, 2002 — Nanfang Daily has become the first paper to sit down and talk with Chen Daoming, who played The King in HERO: How did you feel when you got the script? Actually I didn't think too much about this film. Zhang Yimou asked me to help him. We worked together in his cinematographing dibut ONE AND EIGHT (1983). This film should be seen as Zhang Yimou's attempt at a completely new format. Therefore helping him to transform his style is my second cooperation with him. Really didn't think too much. Not much to think about. Jet Li said he cried twice while reading the script. Did you have the same experience? I didn't. I only feel Broken Sword is a nicely created character. I think other characters are more or less symbolic. How did you know that? You can see it through how each character was wrote in the script. We Chinese often try to understand a film through each character's emotion and fate. Broken Sword is the only character with fully described emotions. Other (characters) are relatively one-dimensional. How do you understand The King? (I must) blend my understanding of the character and my acting style into the style of the film and (I) cannot do it with the routine concept. Therefore basically I didn't play the King of Qin based on the general understanding of him. I portrayed him more as a historical figure, his dressing and his manner. He is in fact a big terra-cotta figure. I played him as a warrior, because before he unified China, he was fighting on the battlefield. That's why he was called "King". "King" means just martialism and wisdom, therefore I think he was a warrior king and a wise king. In this film it is more about the warrior side of him, so I focused more on this side. This might be different from The First Emperor (The King) people have known. He was described very mighty, very enormous, and very glorious. I didn't emphasize on that, because I cannot repeat what has been said. I was not restricted by a frame. I didn't intimidate others to portrait The First Emperor. Read more at the link!