Forever trapped in the shadow of her famous family, billionaire heiress Josie Ho has struggled to find fame and respect on her own terms. Now, ahead of the release of the outrageously gory Dream Home, in which she stars and co-produces, she opens up to Edmund Lee about being underrated and her quest to capture the acting role she'd kill for.

Harsh though it may sound, there was a time when few could believe that Josie Ho wasn’t just a rich daddy’s girl in show business for kicks. Fifteen years and many bold strides in the industry later, the fact she’s Stanley Ho’s daughter seems merely incidental. Now a singer of distinctive musical taste, an established actress with an eclectic roster of roles and the co-founder of the city’s most intriguing film production company, the 35-year-old heiress demands respect for the seriousness she devotes to her crafts alone.

It’s quickly apparent during our 90-minute interview that Ho is in it for real. After recalling and relishing some of her most important movie roles in the past (as a Khmer Rouge militant in Purple Storm, a prostitute with impeccable oral skills in Naked Ambition, a closeted lesbian in Butterfly), the actress frankly admits that none of those amount to something she is overly proud of.

“I think all these movies represent only the beginning [for my acting career],” says Ho. “I still definitely haven’t made a truly representative film.” And then, defying the standard practice of actors being interviewed about their latest film, she adds, “Not even Dream Home – because it’s too much of a genre film. I hope I can achieve that with a drama.”

Dream Home, the new slasher film written and directed by maverick filmmaker Pang Ho-cheung (Isabella, Love in a Puff) and finally set to hit our screens on May 13 after months of delay, sees Ho in her latest leading role. It is also the first ever production project by 852 Films Ltd, a film financing company recently set up by Ho, her husband Conroy Chan, and her manager Andrew Ooi, with the objective of producing commercial yet uncommonly edgy movies.

Two years ago, in a Time Out Hong Kong interview, Pang talked with gleeful enthusiasm about a project in conception. “I’m planning to make a thriller,” he said at the time. “The type in which people are really murdered, with lots of blood and a very high body count…” A project that seemed unlikely to be made at the time has now come to fruition.

Last year, horror buffs around the world were treated their first glimpse into the abyss when a couple of Dream Home film stills started to circulate online, one of which showed actor Juno Mak minus part of his face. It turns out that’s merely the appetiser in Pang’s menu of disturbingly brutal, yet darkly humorous, murders by mutilation and decapitation. With several of its most gruesome shots already failing to make the local theatrical cut despite a Category III rating (they will be kept in the international edit), Dream Home is already shaping up to be one of the most imaginatively gruesome movies Hong Kong cinema has ever unleashed.

“We did our research with some foreign distributors, and we found that the all-time number-one best-selling movie genre is horror,” explains Ho in her role as the project’s co-producer. “What gave us most confidence to take up the project, however, was when my husband and I caught The Story of Ricky on cable.” She’s referring to the 1991 local cult classic, which made its name around the globe for its comically surreal depiction of gore and extreme violence. “We’d never seen such an outrageous film from Hong Kong before, and we thought, ‘Phew, if that could be done, why can’t we do the same?’ It’s awesome.”

In the new film, Ho plays Cheng Lai-sheung, a downtrodden office lady who flips under the pressure of traditional family values, her pig of a boyfriend (played against type by reigning Cantopop king Eason Chan), and Hong Kong’s nonsensically inflating property market, eventually turning into a psychopathic killer who’ll do anything to get her dream apartment with a gorgeous sea view. “When Pang was honing his script,” Ho recalls, “it’s funny how we were constantly reminding each other to make it more brutal; we wanted to push it to the extreme.”

In fact, Ho even urged Pang to move towards the nightmarishly sadistic territory once visited by Japanese director Takashi Miike’s Ichi the Killer, one of Ho’s personal favourites and a project she almost got herself in – if only her manager had allowed her to appear in S&M outfits. After vividly portraying, complete with action and sound effects, a scene from the 2001 film, in which a character’s face was sliced off and splashed onto a wall, Ho returns to reality: “But Pang Ho-cheung wanted the film to be [violent] in a more realistic manner... Our film ends up more Michael Haneke than Takashi Miike,” she laughs. “In any case, I think the audience will be proud of our cinema upon watching this film. We Hongkongers have finally managed to make a film this wicked!”

To prepare for the “big loser” character before the shoot, Ho put herself in the position of the lowest-positioned workers in society. “I tried to understand how these people feel,” she says. “How would I react if I got scolded at work every day? I spent two to three months to get into the mindset of my character. In that period, I dealt with life without any confidence; I fell into the role of a loser.” So how did she feel during the shoot? “There’s nothing I could do about it. I’ve prepared myself to the extent that, when they changed my lines, I just went with it like a loser. I was that person!”

The role may be a largely unsympathetic one, but Ho sees the brighter side. “Cheng Lai-sheung is an anti-hero in that her choice is wrong by our contemporary moral standards; but she’s also a hero in her own way too: she manages to make a big decision, stick to it, and achieves something at the very end.” Indeed, staying persistent to one’s vision is something that resonates deeply with Ho. “Sometimes when you’re working outside, members of the crew or the management companies will sit you down and persuade you to be less persistent,” she says. “When they say it a few more times, you can get confused and start to believe that a person can’t be too persistent. That’s so wrong. There’s no point of living if a person isn’t persistent; if a person can be easily swayed by others, he is the most pathetic person in the world. He can go die now. Die!” she says, smiling.

It is no doubt this determination that has kept her afloat in the entertainment business, some might say against the odds. When she first started out, Ho says she was consumed by the pure joy of performing, but an incident in which she sang noticeably off-pitch at a live performance – which resulted in her record label asking her “to lip-sync at every show till the day I die” – was close to crushing her. Displaying that all-important persistence, however, she marched on to a career more distinguished than many might have predicted, garnering numerous acting awards as well as general recognition from some of Hong Kong’s most respected directors.

But the most frustrating part of it all, says Ho, has more to do with her always-in-the-news family than with any detractors. “I think the image that I project to the mass media is not my real personality. I’m always trying to avoid talking about my family – you know, my family is very high-profile – and my performance is always overshadowed by their news. It’s really unfair. Whenever people talk about me, they have to link me to my background as well. They’re wasting my [artistic effort].”

“It’s not up to me,” Ho continues. “This is the reality, and you just have to accept that they like to [behave] like that. It’s a free world, it’s a free world. If they like to keep a high profile, if that’s the way they like to live, let them be… The most unfortunate part of it is that I think I’m very much underrated. I mean, I’ve been working very seriously. I didn’t dare to talk about this a few years back, but right now, I think I’ve achieved something. I’ve done really well.” Ho pauses and lets out a laugh. “I think I’m quite underrated.”

I proceed to ask Ho for her thoughts about her achievements thus far, when she abruptly cuts short my question. “But I haven’t done what I want to do the most!” And what is that? “All I ever wanted is a fine role for me to fully exert myself. Why can’t someone give me this opportunity? Why? I think this is really regrettable… To be very honest with you, [852 Films] was set up partly to find more good movie parts for me, because not many people out there are willing to give me the chance.”

A stubborn woman crossing the line to achieve her dream? Sounds like a certain new movie – and something to be pretty damn proud of. “My life objective is simple: I want to be an outstanding performer,” Ho concludes emphatically. “If I weren’t a performer, there would be no point of me living. I’d be living dead, a zombie. I hope that when I’m old, people will only say one thing: ‘I remember a certain scene of a certain movie, in which that Josie Ho touched me very deeply.’ I can then die without regrets.”

Dream Home opens May 13.

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