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The Chinese actor who plays Cato, the Martial-Art
manservant and foil to Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau…
JL:
When did you start smoking?
BK: When I
was about 16 years old in a funny little place called Shanghai,
which, as every school person knows, is on the mainland of China.
That’s the answer to the smoking question.
JL: Do you come from Shanghai?
BW: I grew up in Shanghai…do you want the whole
schmeer?
JL: Yeah.
BK: I was
born in Manchester, which is up north somewhere in England. I left
before I was one year old…well, to say I left is a bit strong…I was
taken away, at the age of one, back to Shanghai. And I grew up
there.
JL: Talking about China, and smoking, the Chinese
have been smoking all sorts of stuff for centuries, haven’t they?
BK: Cigarettes, as you must realize, did not get invented until
after Sir Walter Raleigh returned to
Britain from the Colonies. But, yeah, people
have smoked stuff all over the world, of various kinds…
JL: Not necessarily tobacco?
BK: No.
JL: And the Chinese are big smokers, aren’t they?
BK: We are
now.
JL: What do you smoke these days?
BK: Anything
I can get my hands on.
JL: You’ve
appeared in loads and loads of movies. What’s the most
smoker-friendly film you’ve ever appeared in?
BK: When I
did my first ever Pink Panther film – which was called ‘A Shot in
the Dark’ in 1964…it was first time Cato appeared with Inspector
Clouseau…at that time everybody smoked. Ten years later, when I got
to ‘The Return of the Pink Panther’, nobody smoked, except me. And
Blake Edwards, the writer, producer, director, who invented the
whole thing, had given up smoking, and was very anti-smoking. So,
from smoking on the set, I now had to creep around and find a quiet
little corner somewhere, and have a quick puff.
JL: So instead of Cato creeping around waiting to
attack Clouseau, he was actually looking for somewhere to have a
quiet smoke?
BK: Yeah. I wasn’t looking for a place to hide,
I was looking for a place to have a quick drag.
JL: Did Peter Sellers smoke in the old days?
BK: Peter
used to.
JL: But then he had the heart problem?
BK: Yeah.
You see, all of us of sort of grew up during the War (WW2) or
shortly thereafter, we all smoked, because we thought it was manly.
It made us ‘grown-up’. It was one of those things we did so that we
could pretend to be adults. We know better now. I’m a very
anti-smoking smoker?
JL: What does that mean?
BK: This means I never offer cigarettes to anyone. People think
I am a cheapskate…No, I just don’t approve of people smoking.
JL: Does that mean you only smoke your own
cigarettes?
BK: No, I
smoke, as I said earlier, whatever I can get hold of.
JL: That reminds of the Scotsman who said, ‘I’ve
reached the first stage towards not cigarettes…I’ve stopped buying
them.’ Which also reminds me – that you supplied the voice-over for
that great TV series, ‘The Water Margin’…
BK: Yeah.
I’ve chucked my voice all over the place. Most of the time I can’t
remember what I’ve done…
JL: Did you ever actually appear in a Chop-Socky
movie?
BK: No, I’ve
never starred in a Far Eastern martial arts movie….it’s very simple,
I’m not good enough. I’ve recently done a picture with a guy called
Jet Li, called ‘The Kiss of the Dragon’. Fortunately, I was playing
an older, wiser, ‘standstillandsaythewords’ gentleman, who didn’t do
any jumping up and down and hitting people and being hit. But Li is
astonishing. Those guys start doing it when they’re kids, so it’s a
whole lifetime behind what you see. I never had that background.
JL: And their background didn’t include smoking?
BK: That is true.
JL: Have you smoked in some of your recent films?
BK: No, I’m not allowed to smoke in films any more. This means
that actors of my generation don’t know what to do with their hands.
Cos in the old days there was a
cigarette in one hand, and a drink in the other. You’re not allowed
to do either.
JL: You can’t even have two drinks, then?
BK: No. So
what do you do? Well, in a lot of my pictures, I’m supposed to hit
people with my hands, so that gives me something to do.
JL: So have you become more aggressive lately, on
screen, because you can’t smoke?
BK: No, I’ve just gotten older. Now I just prefer
standing still, and giving forth with words of wisdom.
JL: Are film sets around the world now no-go
areas for smokers?
BK: You only smoke on set if the scene requires you to smoke.
Smoking is such a bad thing to do…
JL: But isn’t smoking used in films as a kind of
visual short-hand, i.e. the guy smoking a cigar is either a tycoon
or a villain…
BK: Curiously, a cigar is OK, a
pipe is OK, but cigarettes – No!
JL: Why is a pipe still OK?
BK: Well, if
you’re going to do Sherlock Holmes, the guy’s got to have a pipe,
hasn’t he? A pipe gives a character a professorial dimension.
JL: Have you smoked cigars in any of your roles?
BK: Not
many, but I have, in the past. My problem is that I have been around
for such a long time, I can barely remember…
JL: Back in the 1960s, how smoker-friendly were
the film sets you worked on?
BK: In
those days, everybody smoked. There was never any of that ‘You
musn’t smoke cos it’s gonna kill you’. They only asked you not to
smoke cos it was getting in the way of the cameras.
JL: When was the last time you went to China?
BK: Mainland China?
JL: Yeah.
BK: 1947.
JL: And Hong Kong?
BK: More
recently.
JL: Do they still smoke in Hong Kong?
BK: In
China, you smoke. In California, you don’t.
JL: But the Chinese know about the effects of
smoking. Why do they still continue to smoke?
BK: Because
they like it. Perhaps, in California, people are more aware of how
other people perceive them. Whereas in Hong Kong, that is not quite
as significant. What was that line I said in the Water Margin? ‘Do
not despise the snake for having no horns, for who knows but that it
may become a dragon.’ |
