娱乐英语新闻:"Mr Nice Guy" gets a makeover

"It was the 20,000th time for me (signing an autograph) but was probably the first for him," Ge says. "The first time means a lot."

While he may seem too polite, to the point of being timid, to Chen Kaige, who has worked with him twice, he is very ambitious when it comes to his acting.

Ge is usually unenthusiastic about historical dramas, largely because in two previous films, the moment he appeared on screen, the audience burst into laughter - they could not accept a serious-faced Ge.

But he did agree to star in Chen's Sacrifice.

"He is such an established actor and faces no risk (with this role)," Chen says. "His mettle surprised me. He may seem a softie, but in fact he has great ambition when it comes to acting. In Sacrifice, he challenges himself by playing a person from ancient times."

Although Ge is often thought of as a "Mr Nice Guy", he is picky about many things. He usually reads 30 scripts a year, before choosing just one.

He does not take on a role that he does not understand fully. Chen says he often saw Ge taking what he thought was a nap on the set, but he later realized Ge was actually thinking about his role.

One of his nicknames is "500 million", because he is obsessed with talking to strangers. His friends joke that he must have talked to more than 500 million people by now. But that probably explains how he manages to cover every role with such ease.

With his increasing fame, though, he is finding it harder to chat to strangers.

The actor who is so loved today was never admitted to any acting school. Until 1978, he was a pig farmer in suburban Beijng, a legacy of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76). It was his role in a short skit on pig breeding that took him into a drama troupe.

For years he was offered just cameos, until the 1988 film The Troubleshooters brought out his versatility. At a time when actors and actresses were uniformly good-looking, Ge was a breath of fresh air. But it was not all smooth sailing. Ge still remembers a review he read years ago: "The guy looks so silly, just a look at his teeth makes me want to hit him."

He says he often reminds himself of the old adage: The higher you climb, the harder you fall.

He says he does not aspire to stardom and would rather be known just as an actor.

"An actor is like a worker, you do your job and go home," he says.