NEWS STORY

Former VJ Sook-Yin Lee has starring role in The Art of Woo

TORONTO (CP) - Former MuchMusic VJ Sook-Yin Lee appears in her first starring role in a movie this weekend, playing a gold-digger from suburban Scarborough who tries to land a rich husband by passing herself off as an Asian heiress.

The film, Helen Lee's The Art of Woo, was dismissed by one critic as a derivative piece of fluff when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

But Sook-Yin Lee, who defends the romantic comedy as a re-examination of gold-digger movies of the past, says playing Alessa Woo was a rewarding challenge - not because it involved lying, conniving, and living in a fantasy world, but because it meant looking somewhat like a conventional woman.

"I had to physically change the way that I walked, and the way that I looked. I'm more of a rough and tumble person, and Helen would often say 'Lighter on your feet, Sook-Yin!' And finally I'm wearing like dresses and barrettes in my hair. You know, fancy things like that," says Lee, who is more at home in jeans and combat boots.

After playing Alessa for a while, however, Lee, who is in her early 30s, came to realize that she shared more than a few underlying traits with her flirtatious alter ego, most notably Alessa's fabrication of a new identity for herself.

"It seems like we're total polar opposites. But what I had to work on was, like, Alessa's formula and power have been about being demure, kind of attractive to men," she says.

"And my power in the world has been - I know I've had to compensate by, like, yelling. And I was in bands so much with guys I became like a guy. You know, like a little tomboy. So I really had to recognize that I constructed this thing as much as she had constructed a thing. I constructed a thing that helped me get by in the world easier. And that was to be a scrapper."

Lee adds that she discovered yet another aspect of herself in Alessa, whose shame that her parents, immigrants from southeast Asia, run a convenience store fuels her desire to become somebody else.

"I think it's very common with first generation Canadians, especially if you come from a poverty-stricken background, you are really running from the poverty you were borne into.

"With my parents, they just wanted to succeed in North America. My mom became extremely materialistic. And it was like to succeed materialistically was security and getting away from her past which was fraught with poverty and difficult times."

But Lee, who left home at 15 to become a musician, says she rejected the pursuit of wealth when she saw how much pain it caused her mother.

But though Lee now realizes just how much she differs from her cartoonish TV image, she says she still meets people who expect the two to be identical, and are disappointed to learn otherwise.

"There's this kind of assumption that what you are on TV is how you are. But it's just not. It's boosted up a couple of notches. Or it's much more distilled, like a shrunken wool sweater. And you don't get to see a lot of me.

"Because in the TV medium, you have to be like, 'OH MY GOD! THIS IS AN AMAZING LATTE! WOW!' It's kind of like 'oomph!' more. You don't see me when I'm being a total deadbeat," she says.

"So I think it's bogus when people say that how they see me on TV is how I am. It can never be that way."

Tom Lyons, Canadian Press

http://www.canada.com/vancouver/story.asp?id={7A4205C4-B66D-443E-AB72-E50A76CE2D02

The art of Sook-Yin Lee

By Fiona Hughes

For her first major movie role, former MuchMusic VJ Sook-Yin Lee decided to go against type. A self-described tomboy who's as comfortable in heels as Stone Cold Steve Austin would be in a bra, Lee plays a dainty, feminine golddigger in the romantic comedy The Art of Woo (playing at Granville Seven).

"I'm not a girlie girl," she admits, sitting inside the lobby of Fifth Avenue Cinemas. "I had to completely transform my physical body language and the shoe thing was quite a problem. I had to keep getting wardrobe to find smaller and smaller heels."

In the film, set in Toronto, Lee plays Alessa Woo, an ambitious art curator who poses as a rich Asian heiress to nab a wealthy man. Love doesn't enter the equation. Her plans are complicated, however, when a gifted painter named Ben Crowchild (Adam Beach) moves into the suite next to hers. Passing himself off as poor, Ben falls in love with Alessa and vice versa, but her goal of finding a rich husband gets in the way and she dismisses him. Both, however, have secrets about their background, which are slowly revealed.

Although it's very much a fairy tale, Lee insists the film is grounded in reality. For Alessa, security comes in the form of money, which motivates most people. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, who left war-torn Hong Kong decades ago, Lee says her mother always sought wealth. "It symbolized security for her and her quest for money brought a lot of pain," she says matter-of-factly. "There are a lot of women like Alessa. Money is a major motivator and she's looking for the motherlode. But beyond the money, it's really love and acceptance that's prompting her and that is something I could relate to in the character."

Raised in Lynn Valley, Lee left home and moved downtown when she was 15, looking for like-minded individuals with whom she could express her personality. She found it in Bob's Your Uncle, a rock band that released five albums, toured Canada and the U.S. and led to her landing a plum job on Much Music. But music is only one of Lee's passions. She also explored movie-making early in her career, first with The Escapades of the One Particular Mr. Noodle, an autobiographical tale based on a summer job she had walking the streets dressed as a 10-foot egg noodle. After the film was selected to be part of the NFB's Five Feminist Minutes, she was commissioned to write and direct Hey, Kelly!, part of an educational, anti-racism series for which she also wrote and recorded the soundtrack. Since then, she's had small roles in a variety of films, including Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Lee's reputation soon spread. MuchMusic creator Moses Znaimer heard about Lee through a Vancouver producer and asked her to audition as a VJ. He liked what he saw and hired her. With Bob's Your Uncle dead and nothing else keeping her in Vancouver, Lee relocated to Toronto. After six years, however, Lee felt it was time to move on. "MuchMusic was always pushing me creatively and artistically," she says. "It was never one of those comfy cozy jobs until recently I started to get that familiar feeling that I had to get out and explore a new area."

Dressed in faux fur coat, Mongolian-style winter hat, Lee is clearly someone who has no problem expressing herself. On her last day at MuchMusic a couple of months ago, the flamboyant Lee mooned the camera. Lee is currently in a "state of flux," trying to figure out her next career move. But she is certain of one thing. "I want to be able to tell stories and create-it makes me very happy to sing, to act, to write music, to work with my friends who are like-minded and to explore new things together. That's my goal."

http://www.vancourier.com/122101/entertainment/122101en4.html

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