Edmund Lee meets Louis Koo – the super-tanned actor who has enchanted Hong Kong with his deadpan humour, Mr Cool demeanour, and delightfully terrible Putonghua. Just don’t call him a movie star. Photography by Calvin Sit.

See also: Alan Mak and Felix Chong interview

In case you’re wondering, the answer is no: we didn’t speak in Putonghua in this interview with Louis Koo, one of the stars of Overheard, the new crime thriller co-directed by Alan Mak and Felix Chong of Infernal Affairs fame. Not that we haven’t privately had our fun with the recent 30-second commercial that Koo shot on the Mainland for Japanese tire company Yokohama.

In the ad, the actor demonstrates his affection for a motor tire by gently caressing it, before unleashing the unintentionally hilarious Putonghua taglines – which sound more like a string of Cantonese swear words. YouTube videos of the clip have accumulated hundreds of thousands of clicks since going online in mid June, with another spoof video, done by a group of radio DJs, attracting almost as many views.

And with that, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Louis Koo: one of Hong Kong’s favourite movie stars, and one, we may now add, who’s popular enough to knock a population off their chairs with merely two lines of mispronounced Putonghua delivery. “Now first of all, I’m not a movie star,” Koo corrects me bluntly. “I’m an actor – simple as that.” Then… silence. I’ve just asked Koo how it feels to be a movie star, and he has responded by adopting a disinterested expression and leaning back into his chair.

So is this the Louis Koo that’s renowned for being difficult in interviews? The Louis Koo that, two days before our appointment, the film’s publicist advises me to ‘prepare myself’ for? Not in the slightest, as it turns out. Koo goes on to speak eloquently about his new movie and his craft in general, reserving his odd sarcastic one-liners only for questions that are verging on the personal. (What’s a normal working day of yours like? “Work; go home.” If you weren’t an actor, what would you be doing? “I’d be doing something non-actors do. It’s best to be Batman, or Superman.”)

But then again, who can blame him for being defensive at times? Going from the agreeable face of TV dramas from mid-1990s to early 2000s (“a training period for me, a bit like going to school”), to the lady-killing Cantopop idol ‘Mr Cool’ who sang mostly within one octave (“like a part-time job”), and now undoubtedly one of the most established actors in Hong Kong cinema (“the time to practice what I’ve learned”), it’s presumably a survival skill that Koo has learned to fend off Hong Kong’s tabloid-oriented, sensationalism-loving Chinese press.

It must therefore come with at least a tinge of irony that he’s now sitting down to discuss a film about “paparazzi” – a term Koo uses to refer to the Hong Kong Police’s Criminal Intelligence Bureau, which sits at the centre of Overheard’s action. Set against the financial crisis, the film tells of a surveillance mission gone awry, when the strong camaraderie among three police officers – played by Koo, Lau Ching-wan and Daniel Wu – is tested by the temptation to use a listed company’s insider knowledge to make an illegal profit of their own.

Koo says of his role: “My character is the most experienced member of the unit. He is a family man with three daughters and a son to support. However, due to his limited academic qualifications, it’s difficult for him to get a promotion no matter how much he tries.” Does Koo, 38, find it strange to be playing a character that’s even older than 45-year-old Lau’s? Koo first admits that it was weird to play the oldest guy in the trio, before downplaying the challenge. “It’s part of being an actor. You just have to think it through very carefully, and find a way to convince the audience.”

To look his character’s age, Koo gained 13.5kg, applied make up and adopted a new hairstyle for most of the shoot. And yet, according to the actor, that was not even the most challenging part of his role. “The wiretapping business is a secret occupation in Hong Kong,” explains Koo. “Very few people know about the actual nature of this job; and for those who’ve been in the field, the government also forbids them to disclose anything in the seven years after they leave their positions. We only managed to talk to a few people who’ve been in the job, and we put much of what we learned into the movie.”

He continues: “[Surveillance] is a nerve-racking job, so nerve-racking, in fact, that it’s more ridiculous than the Hang Sang Index under the financial tsunami. My character’s speech rhythm and his job nature are all really tense.” Is it meant as a reflection of the ordinary Hong Kong life nowadays? “He’s not an ordinary Hongkonger; he’s a Hongkonger times ten,” says Koo. “If you think that we’re anxious with our living at the moment, my character is ten times more desperate.”

Despite his calm and composed exterior, the actor has already found himself the reluctant hero – or more precisely, the everyman who gets caught up in all kinds of shit – in one movie after another, the last being Benny Chan’s 2008 action blockbuster, Connected. “My character in Connected is very down-to-earth,” Koo reflects on the exhilarating Cellular remake, “but his encounters in the story are totally extraordinary.”

Having somehow made these clumsy, shabby characters an inimitable part of his acting repertoire, does Koo have some special insight into such roles? Or, could it simply be the glasses that he wears while playing them? “The main reason I wear glasses in movies is… because [filmmakers] think my eyes have too much of a killer look in them,” he says, dead-seriously, “so that they have to shield them with a pair of glasses as damage control. It’s not necessarily [this time] because my character is more down-to-earth.”

With or without glasses, Koo is no doubt one of Hong Kong’s pre-eminent comic actors, having seemingly found the perfect balance between his Mr Cool persona and quirky humour. “In my opinion, doing comedy has a lot to do with your personal character, but it’s also not just about you,” Koo reflects. “The hardest part of it is to ensure the audience’s reaction. For the whole thing to work, you need them to react to what you’ve projected. You don’t need to exaggerate your movement, but you also can’t do without any.”

In fact, we’ll be seeing many more of Koo’s movements as he is following up Overheard with a dip into shameless comedy territory, headlining Wong Jing’s On His Majesty’s Secret Service. “In that new film, I’ll be trying to play in a really exaggerated manner, because I think greater degree of body language is required to break through the cultural boundaries.” Does this mean he’s looking to go international? “It’s not within my control,” says Koo, disarmingly. “As actors, we’re in a passive position. It’s not about what I want to do; I’m only asked to do [my films]. I want to play Superman too, but is there any Superman project in Hong Kong?”

There isn’t, unfortunately, which may or may not explain why Koo has instead starred in so many of our best crime thrillers in the past few years: that’s him in Derek Yee’s nightmarish Protégé; that’s him in Wilson Yip’s action fiesta Flash Point; and then that’s him, him, him, and him in a long line of Johnnie To projects, from Throw Down and Triangle, to Election I and II. According to Koo, these are the films to start with if you’re completely new to his filmography. “Of course it’s better to start with the more recent films,” he smiles when asked of his recommendations. “I’m very against the idea of looking back at the ones made more than a decade ago. Man, don’t bother.”

Koo needn’t worry about the effect such early work could have on his image. After all, his image as that well-dressed, smirking man about town is so prevalent on fashion magazine covers these days that you may have to double check our cover shot to confirm that there’s no endorsed watch on his wrist. So does he consider himself something of a fashion icon? “Although I do like to read and go shopping to see what the new trend is, I’ll say no if you ask me whether I feel like an icon,” says Koo. “Gee, I only wear what people give me! If I can have my own design one day, then it’s another story.”

Koo may not yet be an icon in fashion, but nobody can question his iconic status in, well, tanning. We thus conclude our conversation with the million-dollar question: why did the actor decide to get so tanned in the first place? Koo takes a longer pause than usual, and finally offers, “There are only three words to my answer. I. Like. It.” Now that’s Mr Cool for you.

See also: Alan Mak and Felix Chong interview