By James Leavey
Burt Kwouk
The Chinese actor who plays Cato, the Martial-Art manservant and foil to Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau...
JL: When did you start smoking?
BK: When I was about 16 years old in a funny little place called Shanghai, which, as every school person knows, is on the mainland of China. That's the answer to the smoking question.
JL: Do you come from Shanghai?
BK: I grew up in Shanghai…do you want the whole schmeer?
JL: Yeah.
BK: I was born in Manchester, which is up north somewhere in England. I left before I was one year old…well, to say I left is a bit strong…I was taken away, at the age of one, back to Shanghai. And I grew up there.
JL: Talking about China, and smoking, the Chinese have been smoking all sorts of stuff for centuries, haven't they?
BK: Cigarettes, as you must realize, did not get invented until after Sir Walter Raleigh returned to Britain from the Colonies. But, yeah, people have smoked stuff all over the world, of various kinds…
JL: Not necessarily tobacco?
BK: No.
JL: And the Chinese are big smokers, aren't they?
BK: We are now.
JL: What do you smoke these days?
BK: Anything I can get my hands on.
JL: You've appeared in loads and loads of movies. What's the most smoker-friendly film you've ever appeared in?
BK: When I did my first ever Pink Panther film – which was called 'A Shot in the Dark' in 1964…it was first time Cato appeared with Inspector Clouseau…at that time everybody smoked. Ten years later, when I got to 'The Return of the Pink Panther', nobody smoked, except me. And Blake Edwards, the writer, producer, director, who invented the whole thing, had given up smoking, and was very anti-smoking. So, from smoking on the set, I now had to creep around and find a quiet little corner somewhere, and have a quick puff.
JL: So instead of Cato creeping around waiting to attack Clouseau, he was actually looking for somewhere to have a quiet smoke?
BK: Yeah. I wasn't looking for a place to hide, I was looking for a place to have a quick drag.
JL: Did Peter Sellers smoke in the old days?
BK: Peter used to.
JL: But then he had the heart problem?
BK: Yeah. You see, all of us of sort of grew up during the War (WW2) or shortly thereafter, we all smoked, because we thought it was manly. It made us 'grown-up'. It was one of those things we did so that we could pretend to be adults. We know better now. I'm a very anti-smoking smoker?
JL: What does that mean?
BK: This means I never offer cigarettes to anyone. People think I am a cheapskate…No, I just don't approve of people smoking.
JL: Does that mean you only smoke your own cigarettes?
BK: No, I smoke, as I said earlier, whatever I can get hold of.
JL: That reminds of the Scotsman who said, 'I've reached the first stage towards not cigarettes…I've stopped buying them.' Which also reminds me – that you supplied the voice-over for that great TV series, 'The Water Margin'…
BK: Yeah. I've chucked my voice all over the place. Most of the time I can't remember what I've done…
JL: Did you ever actually appear in a Chop-Socky movie?
BK: No, I've never starred in a Far Eastern martial arts movie….it's very simple, I'm not good enough. I've recently done a picture with a guy called Jet Li, called 'The Kiss of the Dragon'. Fortunately, I was playing an older, wiser, 'standstillandsaythewords' gentleman, who didn't do any jumping up and down and hitting people and being hit. But Li is astonishing. Those guys start doing it when they're kids, so it's a whole lifetime behind what you see. I never had that background.
JL: And their background didn't include smoking?
BK: That is true.
JL: Have you smoked in some of your recent films?
BK: No, I'm not allowed to smoke in films any more. This means that actors of my generation don't know what to do with their hands. Cos in the old days there was a cigarette in one hand, and a drink in the other. You're not allowed to do either.
JL: You can't even have two drinks, then?
BK: No. So what do you do? Well, in a lot of my pictures, I'm supposed to hit people with my hands, so that gives me something to do.
JL: So have you become more aggressive lately, on screen, because you can't smoke?
BK: No, I've just gotten older. Now I just prefer standing still, and giving forth with words of wisdom.
JL: Are film sets around the world now no-go areas for smokers?
BK: You only smoke on set if the scene requires you to smoke. Smoking is such a bad thing to do…
JL: But isn't smoking used in films as a kind of visual short-hand, i.e. the guy smoking a cigar is either a tycoon or a villain…
BK: Curiously, a cigar is OK, a pipe is OK, but cigarettes – No!
JL: Why is a pipe still OK?
BK: Well, if you're going to do Sherlock Holmes, the guy's got to have a pipe, hasn't he? A pipe gives a character a professorial dimension.
JL: Have you smoked cigars in any of your roles?
BK: Not many, but I have, in the past. My problem is that I have been around for such a long time, I can barely remember…
JL: Back in the 1960s, how smoker-friendly were the film sets you worked on?
BK: In those days, everybody smoked. There was never any of that 'You musn't smoke cos it's gonna kill you'. They only asked you not to smoke cos it was getting in the way of the cameras.
JL: When was the last time you went to China?
BK: Mainland China?
JL: Yeah.
BK: 1947.
JL: And Hong Kong?
BK: More recently.
JL: Do they still smoke in Hong Kong?
BK: In China, you smoke. In California, you don't.
JL: But the Chinese know about the effects of smoking. Why do they still continue to smoke?
BK: Because they like it. Perhaps, in California, people are more aware of how other people perceive them. Whereas in Hong Kong, that is not quite as significant. What was that line I said in the Water Margin? 'Do not despise the snake for having no horns, for who knows but that it may become a dragon.'
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