Tony Leung Ka-fai reflects on his career ahead of Sons of the Neon Night’s Cannes premiere

Prolific Hong Kong actor feels ‘very lucky’ to have played so many different characters, and reveals what goes into creating them

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Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Ka-fai at the 2025 Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy, where he presented director Tsui Hark with a lifetime achievement award. Photo: Riccardo Modena

Published: 9:45am, 10 May 2025Updated: 2:16pm, 21 Oct 2025

It has been a while since Tony Leung Ka-fai last made a high-profile appearance at a European film festival to promote a film, so the occasion feels a little special.

Still, when we sit down with him during the 2025 Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy, the Hong Kong film legend is waiting patiently in the hospitality suite of the Teatro Novo, quietly sipping a beer as journalists and photographers swirl around the room.

“I like this festival,” Leung says. “I enjoy Udine and the audience here. Cannes is more formal, more commercial. You have to be on all the time.”

This year the Far East Film Festival awarded filmmaker Tsui Hark a Golden Mulberry for Lifetime Achievement. Leung introduced Tsui to a sold-out crowd and handed him the award after a screening of Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants, the pair’s most recent collaboration as star and director respectively.

In the film, which is based on seven chapters of Louis Cha Leung-yung’s 1959 tale The Legend of the Condor Heroes, Leung plays Venom West, a power-mad martial artist who intends to take over the world by stealing an important scripture.

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