Actor and singer Edison Chen is credited with popularizing hip-hop in mainstream Cantonese culture. He chats to Adam White about the entertainment industry, being an idol, and getting jumped in Central.

Did I do well in school? Not really. I was really good at basketball – though the coaches would always wait for the last day before selection to cut me. I’m just not a school person, y’know?

I was never into music or film when I was young. I’d always mock school plays. When I was 16, my father would push me - “You have to get into entertainment.” And because it was my father, I had to go to all these auditions he’d arranged.

Citibank offered to shoot a commercial with me – 100k, and said they’d fly me to New York business class, keep me in a five-star hotel, and I was like “oh shit, this is something I have to try!”

I hate Karaoke. I think Karaoke is stupid.

People say, “He was cocky, he was an asshole.” Yeah, maybe. Come on! I was 19!

People who don’t know me think I’m a dick. You guys read too many magazines.

I think I’m 50 percent of where I want to be. I want to consider myself successful by 32. That’s when I want to settle down.

It’s all about the money. Don’t get me wrong, I love acting, film, music – the job. But I hate the spotlight. The price of fame is too much. If I could make the same amount of money as a lawyer, then I would.

My press? Shit, I don’t even read it anymore. You can say I have three cocks, say I’ve done everything. They can write I’m gay – they still haven’t done that yet.

I got beat down in Central in 2004. It’s okay with me now. Four days before I got beat down, I’d just been released from hospital. I was on antibiotics, painkillers. Two Filipinos came up to me and said, “Are you Edison? Because if you are, we’ll have to beat down on you.”

I admit, I pushed – there were two of them. I got punches to me face, body. Then they ran. I saw a press photographer who just been standing there the whole time and yelled, “How can you take pictures of that and not do anything?”

I decided I’m not going out like any punk. Hey, I’m not going to let that happen. I ran after them, I remember screaming at the photographer, “You fucking idiot! Why aren’t you taking pics of THEM?”

I caught them, not to beat them down, but so people wouldn’t fuck with me again. But if I’d wanted to press charges, they’d have to cuff me as well. That’d ruin my career; I’d lose millions of dollars. Just as long as they know that I’d caught them. When you need help, you learn who comes though for you.

It’s upsetting that no one has faith in me, that stuff always happens to me because I AM bad.

I’m entertaining YOU. It’s like I’m a circus monkey: My consumers are my boss, and I don’t understand why people in this industry think that they’re superior to anyone.

There’s an idea that people in entertainment only chill with each other. I got out, I had to get out.

I hate TVB.

I’m respected as an actor – not at the level I wish to be, so I have to work harder.

I’d rather have people respect my work than respect me.

There’s a saying I’ve kept with myself all the years: “Nobody will love you like you do – not even your mother.”

I had one idol. I loved Michael Jordan. Just because he would never quit, even if he’s lost the first time, then he’d keep going, and come back. I met my father when I was 9, and my mother was always working hard. So I’d never seen anyone like that before.

Jordan retired on my birthday. I woke up and was like, “What!”

I don’t consider myself an idol. I try to shy away from that. I don’t want kids to see me smoking and say, “I want to smoke.”

I do the same things: I eat, shit, sleep: human things. I’m just human, I can’t be an idol.

I tell people that the last good, pure person who died was Mother Teresa.

It seems like a lot of the goodness in the world has gone. No one’s fostering it, supporting it.

In such a promotion-based city, there’s no press for the underground music scene. No one’s funding the indie music scene. No radio station plays independent music in Hong Kong. I don’t make my money from music, so I can push that point.

I know a lot, lot, lot of talented musicians who are never given the chance in Hong Kong.

I hate this market. I hate it. It’s bland, and boring. There’s no cooperation between anyone, it’s every man for himself. We can’t move forward that way. There are five people
over the age of fifty deciding what music and image all of Hong Kong should have.

Music is art. The record companies are just layering images and graphics. It’s stupid.