Digital Cover: Louise Wong on taking challenging roles and thriving under pressure

Louise Wong’s acting career has been a success right out of the gate, but that doesn’t mean she plans to take it easy. She tells David Ho about taking on challenging roles and thriving under pressure

No one could ever accuse Louise Wong of taking the easy path. While most entertainers have rather colourful careers, Wong’s trajectory is one that is filled with challenges that are often by her own choosing, all of which she has overcome rather impressively.    

Her latest movie Hit N Fun sees her learning Muay Thai and tackling her first comedic role as well. She plays a businesswoman who gets roped into a fight with a Muay Thai champion, and it’s something that she admits hasn’t been easy. “There is quite a bit of fight choreography involved and we only had a month and half to prepare. We also had to find a way to get the hits to look good on camera, without hurting each other. In the end, we decided to just go for it and really throw the punches,” Wong says.     

“Comedy is also new to me and there was a fair bit of improvisation in the movie. But it’s very satisfying when the director tells you it’s a good take, and you surprise yourself with what you can do. I’m surprised at how flexible I can be and I even feel more muscular!”

Another recent role for her was playing a firefighter in the 2024 disaster film Cesium Fallout. It was also a fairly physical endeavour as Wong had to carry a lot of actual firefighting gear in the movie, like oxygen tanks. 

“This industry involves a lot of luck and hard work. You are always waiting for a good script and for a chance to prove yourself,” says Wong on finding herself in these difficult parts. 

This patience and perseverance is likely instilled in her from her fashion days. Wong started modelling at the tender age of sixteen after winning the Elite Model Look Asia Pacific regional competition, a prestigious contest by the same agency that discovered supermodels such as Cindy Crawford and Stephanie Seymour. She remains the only Hongkonger to have achieved this feat, which propelled her onto catwalks and campaigns all around the globe.     

When the now 34-year-old made the switch to acting, Wong entered the scene with a similar bang by scoring the lead role in Anita, the 2021 biopic of the late Cantopop legend Anita Mui. The funny thing is, she had no idea that she was auditioning for this plum role when she received the casting call. 

“I received the audition notice on Facebook,” recalls Wong. “I was given two scenes to perform, a dialogue scene and a song to sing from the movie Rouge. At the time I was still a fashion model, so it was quite out of my comfort zone. But I felt I had nothing to lose, so I went for it.”

And Wong knocked it out of the park. The casting director walked past when Wong was auditioning for her assistant and was immediately entranced. Wong later found out that she was in the last group of auditionees of a two-year, region-wide search for someone to play Mui. The project would likely not have seen the light of day had they not found the right actress.   

It took a few more call backs for her to land the role in Anita. Wong recalls the final audition involved her wearing Mui’s iconic bridal gown and performing the song “Sunset Melody”, a key moment in the late diva’s career when she symbolically “married” the stage during her 2003 farewell concert.   

“Some of the staff ran out in the middle of the audition and I was stunned because I had no idea why. Still, I kept singing and focused on pouring all my emotions into the song and its message of living in the moment,” says Wong. A few days later, Wong received the call that she had won the role and was told that the staff who ran out were so overcome with emotions that they needed to head outside to shed tears. 

The rest is history. Wong’s star making turn in the film led to critical and commercial acclaim, including a Best New Performer award at the 40th Hong Kong Film Awards. In a sense, Anita proved to be like the passing of the baton from one entertainer to another, similar to how playing the singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez in the biopic Selena provided Jennifer Lopez with her breakthrough.

During our chat between outfit changes in this #legend shoot, Wong is warm, present, and open. One gets the sense that she is genuinely grateful for the chance to play Mui and for the doors it has opened for her. She is just as effusive and eager when talking about the different roles she has played since then, which quickly followed.

Playing a well-loved diva must have been intense and high-pressure, which Wong freely admits it was. But the subsequent roles have not been easy either. In A Guilty Conscience, she plays a single mother falsely accused of murdering her daughter. If that doesn’t sound tough enough, Wong also had to learn sign language for the role, eventually earning a certification for it.

If you think Wong is done finding ways to challenge herself, you’d be mistaken. Wong recently completed filming in Central America, in the Dominican Republic and Panama to be exact, for the upcoming TV series Coolies. Arvin Chen, the American-Taiwanese director behind the project, has already praised Wong in the media for her natural acting skills and having the potential to be Hong Kong Kong cinema’s next crossover star. 

Set in 19th century Cuba, Wong plays a woman from Guangzhou who moves to a sugarcane plantation there to marry a political exile. She is then caught up in a love triangle and becomes involved in the fight for servants and African slaves seeking freedom. Geography wasn’t the only challenge for Wong. With an international cast, her dialogue in the film was mainly in English, with a good amount of Spanish and Mandarin involved.

When asked whether she hopes this sets her on a path for more international projects, Wong is open to the idea. “I hope so. I want to continue to find new challenges, I find that I actually thrive under pressure,” she says. “I would love to play something crazy and a little unexpected of me, like a serial killer or be in a period drama.” 

Despite her gung-ho attitude to her thespian work, it might come as a surprise to some that Wong describes herself as a homebody and an introvert. She enjoys watching movies, citing Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express as a favourite. She also discusses newer films with equal fervour, as we exchange notes on movies like The Substance and Wicked (her daughter’s favourite!) and films we look forward to seeing like The Room Next Door starring her acting #legend Tilda Swinton. 

Wong positively glows when talking about her husband, singer Sheldon Lo. Lo is currently away in Perth, Australia studying to be a chiropractor and Wong speaks of him with great fondness, expressing how grateful she is for Lo’s sacrifices and proudly telling us he made it to the top 2 percent of his cohort. 

Despite the long-distance situation, the duo communicates often, and she even sent videos of her Muay Thai prep work for her Hit N Fun role to her boxing enthusiast husband. It’s great to see the two lovebirds still as in love and devoted to each other as they were when they fronted a #legend cover together.          

It’s all solid for Wong on the personal and professional side. Her wish for 2025 though, is to do more travelling that is not work-related. To be an actor, you need to have a life. You need to just go out, see and experience more. It will really enrich your acting,” she says. 

As we part ways, I overhear Wong reminding her team that she has a dance class later. Could this be preparation for another role perhaps? Well, when you are as fearless as Wong, the sky is the limit.      

CREDITS

Creative and production: #legend
Photographer: Ruby Law
Videographer: Jess
Lighting assistant: Yu Man Kan
Set design: Victor Tang
Set design assistant: Ella
Stylist: Anthony Tong
Stylist Assistant: KC Cheung & Natalie
Hair: Hillnex
Makeup: Pinky

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