ABSTRACT
Taiwanese Lee Kang-sheng (Li Kangsheng, b. 1968) has been called ‘art house cinema’s most unlikely superstar’ (Hu 2005). A highly visible Chinese actor in today’s globalized film culture, Lee is associated exclusively with art cinema. It is in the context of art cinema’s regular concern with the everyday that we watch his strikingly ordinary body perform predominantly ordinary actions: sleeping, smoking, drinking, eating, urinating, masturbating. His stardom demonstrates an intriguing juxtaposition between the ordinary and the extraordinary, and between the real person and the star persona.
