Tony Leung, actor: I considered quitting because I was on the verge of an existential boredom, but working with Wong Kar-wai transformed me'

Tony Leung, 63, enters a Madrid hotel lobby with a calm demeanor that slows the pace and seems to lower the temperature. His film image was cemented by In the Mood for Love, which won him the best actor award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. He later improved his English and can now interview in that language in a calm style. In Silent Friend, he plays a kindly neurologist confined during the pandemic at a German university. Leung traces his zen spirit to two paternal abandonments: his father leaving when he was five or six, causing shame and emotional suppression, and Wong Kar-wai’s childhood solitude in Hong Kong tied to his mother’s favorite actor, Errol Flynn, and Nat King Cole’s “Quizas, Quizas, Quizas.”

"“I was five or six when my father left home. Honestly, I was a very lively kid. Suddenly shadows fell over my family. I couldn't tell my classmates I no longer had a father. I felt a lot of shame. I swallowed my feelings; I didn't express my emotions. That's how my character was formed. My sister and my mother respected my secrets.”"

Read at english.elpais.com