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Dai Xiang Yu gets a foot in the Hollywood door

SINGAPORE — Things are starting to pick up for Dai Xiang Yu, whom you may remember as the artiste formerly known as Dai Yang Tian, after a rocky three years since returning to work in his native China. The actor has been cast in the film Lost In The Pacific, a Hollywood-China co-production that stars Brandon Routh (Superman Returns, Arrow), Russell Wong (The Joy Luck Club, Romeo Must Die), Hong Kong’s Bernice Liu and China’s Zhang Yu Qi.

SINGAPORE — Things are starting to pick up for Dai Xiang Yu, whom you may remember as the artiste formerly known as Dai Yang Tian, after a rocky three years since returning to work in his native China. The actor has been cast in the film Lost In The Pacific, a Hollywood-China co-production that stars Brandon Routh (Superman Returns, Arrow), Russell Wong (The Joy Luck Club, Romeo Must Die), Hong Kong’s Bernice Liu and China’s Zhang Yu Qi.

For the past month, Dai has been filming at Malaysia’s Pinewood Studios. Production will wrap in early May and the sci-fi thriller, in which he plays an arrogant young pilot on board a doomed flight, will be released at the end of the year. He was approached for the role by director Vincent Zhou (Last Flight), an acquaintance of his from a while back, “because he felt I suited the character’s image”, he said.

Does this mean that Dai, who is managed by MediaCorp in Singapore as well as by Chinese company Mango Entertainment, is headed for the big time? “Of course, I hope to have more opportunities to do Hollywood films so that I can learn more. The way they work is completely different,” he said. “At the moment, I don’t have the ability to work in Hollywood because my English isn’t good enough. So, I’m just giving this a shot and seeing what it’s like to be in a production that is entirely in English.”

TONGUES OF HELLFIRE

The 30-year-old Shanghainese, whose scenes mainly take place in a cockpit with Zhang, shared that he speaks “about 30 lines” in the movie and that those 30 lines gave him hell. “I wanted to die. Fifteen days before the start of filming, I had all the lines memorised backwards and forwards. But it didn’t help. We would do table reads and people would say they couldn’t really understand me. I felt like I was descending to the depths of hell each day.”

He added: “My pace would slow as I walked onto the set! Because whenever I pronounced a word wrongly and it sounded like some other word, everyone would erupt in laughter. On top of that, they would change the lines at the last minute. I now understand how Pierre Png feels! The director would say to the others, ‘As long as it feels right, you can play around with your lines.’ I told him, ‘I will not be changing a single word.’”

It doesn’t help that, as a pilot, his lines are mostly difficult technical jargon. “‘Reads at 30 NM’ — this line drove me crazy,” he sighed, shaking his head.

But don’t be mistaken — he isn’t the actor with the most botched takes on set. “Actually, I don’t mess up often, because I’m so afraid I’ll get my lines wrong,” he said. “I had a language teacher record the lines for me and I would listen to them over and over, right up to the moment before my scenes. So, I delivered my lines quite smoothly. But of course, right after I finished each scene, I’d rip up the page.”

It’s a load off his shoulders now that all his scenes with dialogue have been completed and there are just action scenes left to film. This means a lot of green screen work as he battles imaginary mutant creatures. “All my previous fight scenes have been with actors. Now, I’m fighting air or a camera,” he said. “That’s quite special.”

Has he been scared off English productions for life? “I would really have to think hard about (doing another one),” he chuckled. “In this one, I don’t have to emote — it’s just technical jargon. I don’t think I’d be able to tell someone I loved them in English.”

Dai Xiang Yu runs through some of his lines from Hollywood flick Lost In The Pacific with us. 

TURN OF LUCK

It’s undeniable that a Hollywood flick is good exposure for Dai. “My career is beginning to pick up slowly. Before this, it wasn’t so great. In the first two years after I moved back to China, I didn’t have any jobs.”

But in the past year, he has done three Chinese dramas, including the second season of the web series White Campus Belle And Long Legs, which, with 200 million views to date, is one of China’s top three web series. Of course, the fact that he got really ripped to play a boxer in the drama Shan Liang Ming Tian, which is about to air in China, doesn’t hurt his profile, either. “I had to be shirtless so I worked out like crazy. I got used to that routine so I still do it,” he said. “You have to maintain your physique because you never know when it will be needed.”

So, did changing his name really bring him luck? “I don’t know. I do feel that these two years have gone more smoothly for me. Maybe it really does have something to do with the name change,” he said, although he admitted that “at the time, I did it because of some kind of obsession; because I hadn’t had work in two years, which put this notion into my head”.

Has his luck changed in his personal life, too? “There’s someone I like but we are still getting to know each other,” he demurred. Interjected his Chinese manager, with a laugh: “This is the 16th different answer he’s given today.” Well, maybe he’s just having us all on . After all, that’s what actors do, right? MAY SEAH

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