Kris Phillips, who is better known as Fei Xiang in China, acting as Yin Shou, the cruel and dangerous ruler in the fantastical trilogy, Creation of the Gods, by director Wuershan.

Left and right: He attends events during the Beijing International Film Festival, as a jury member for its Tiantan Award.

In late April, a gentle breeze swept across the serene landscape of Yanqi Lake, nestled on the northern outskirts of Beijing. Despite the picturesque view from his hotel room window, Kris Phillips, who is better known as Fei Xiang in China, had just had a hectic week that contrasted sharply with the tranquillity outside.

As a jury member for the 14th Beijing International Film Festival's Tiantan Award, the Chinese-American singer and actor viewed the 15 shortlisted films competing for honors and attended multiple news conferences over the course of a tight 12-day schedule.

Describing himself as a movie lover who re-watched golden era Hollywood films, like those starring Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, to prepare for his new comedy Out of Order, the 63-year-old star says he was fascinated by the opportunity to admire movies from a variety of countries, including Argentina and Israel.

"I think film offers us a window into other people's lives. That's what we want. China has a huge amount of potential in this regard," he tells China Daily. "I feel like the Chinese film industry is now at a fascinating moment and entering a golden period of filmmaking. It's going to be like America between the 1970s and 1980s, a period when there was a huge expansion of talent, and dedication to film as an art form."

For Chinese people born in the 1970s and '80s, Phillips was the pop king of their era.

After graduating from Stanford University, the performer, who has an American father and a Chinese mother, returned to Taiwan and began his showbiz career in the TV series Eleven Women, paving his way to stardom as a heartthrob in several movies adapted from novels by Chiung Yao, a well-known romance novelist from Taiwan.

However, it was his musical talent — exemplified by the release of a series of albums and a successful tour of 60 sold-out concerts — that catapulted Phillips to fame for millions of fans in the Chinese mainland following his dynamic and charismatic performance of the song, Dongtian Lide Yibahuo (Ball of Fire), at China Central Television's 1987 Spring Festival Gala.

Reflecting on his early years, and seemingly experiencing a nostalgic moment, Phillips says that he believed he lacked the experience to excel as an actor at the time, and questioned whether he wanted to settle for being an average actor, or strive to become a top-notch pop singer.

"When I saw my (early) films, I said to myself, 'Well, I'd better just stick to singing.' That was my reaction. And that's exactly what I did. I pulled the plug on my film work. I released album after album, did concerts, and performed in theaters in America," he says.

Over the following two decades, he dedicated himself to music, establishing a presence in the United States despite the then challenging environment for Asian performers, through a series of high-profile performances, beginning with his role in the original Broadway cast of Miss Saigon, and culminating in appearing in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Music of the Night.

Back to cinema

Fate has once again drawn Phillips, once praised by The New Yorker as "the most handsome Chinese man", back into the world of cinema.

In 2011, director Wuershan from Hohhot, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, confirmed that he would direct Painted Skin: The Resurrection, a fantastic romance loosely inspired by Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) novelist Pu Songling's Liaozhai Zhiyi (Strange Tales From a Chinese Studio), and invited him to play the role of a powerful sorcerer.

"I thought, 'well, maybe I'll give film a try again. Who knows what will happen?' After that experience, I've now come full circle back to doing film, which is so fascinating to me," he says, recalling the moment.

After portraying a villainous king in the 2016 film, The Monkey King 2, the performer took on his most popular role to date as Yin Shou, the cruel and dangerous ruler in the fantastical trilogy Creation of the Gods, a character he describes as a "sociopath".

One of the most expensive franchises ever filmed in the country, the trilogy is based on the 16th-century novel Fengshen Yanyi (The Investiture of the Gods), and employed a crew of 8,000 members and took five years to write all three scripts.

The epic blends myth, folklore, and history to depict the turbulent period leading to the collapse of the Shang Dynasty (c. 16th century-11th century BC), when the last of the dynasty's tyrants faces a war launched by an army seeking justice.

After the first installment, Kingdom of Storms, raked in more than 2.6 billion yuan ($358.8 million) and became a phenomenal hit last summer, Phillips made many young fans online, as evidenced by buzzwords discussing a number of topics associated with the star, from his charming accent to his chiseled physique.

He feels that the trilogy exemplifies Wuershan's passion for cinema and his determination to present the Shang Dynasty, an ancient era that has been barely touched by recent TV series or movies, to a global audience.

"I was there for a year and a half during filming. Some of the young actors had been working for more than two or three years to prepare," he says. "I think that kind of scope for a project like Creation of the Gods is rare in Hollywood now; they don't undertake it anymore. It's too expensive and too financially risky for investors. Nowadays, film is not only entertainment and an art form, but also more and more a business."

Despite a strict schedule of exercise and diet, which Phillips teasingly describes as "tedious and horrible", he says his biggest challenge was keeping in mind the story arc over the course of the trilogy. In the second and third sequels, his character will undergo significant changes, relying on a fox demon transformed into a beautiful woman to seize absolute power.

"The training was rigorous, but it was kind of mindless. It was like a factory where not only I, but also all the young actors, who play zhizi (the sons of lords sent to the dynasty's capital to ensure their fathers' loyalty), had to undergo months of training to gain the musculature and physical shape for the film," he says.

"As long as you complete it, you will lose fat and gain muscles, and the results are guaranteed. So that part is like a scientific procedure and it's simple," adds the self-disciplined star, who woke up at 3 am to have enough time to exercise before starting makeup at 6 am.

Interestingly, the diligent star not only fulfilled his duty as an actor but also helped to write the film's English subtitles, based on which German and French were later translated respectively, as he wanted international audiences to better understand the characters' motivations and be able to follow the fast-paced story.

"It was very challenging to do the subtitles because you have to make choices. You only have limited space for a line, and you also have to convey the dialogue in the characters' voices," he explains, giving the examples of Yin Shou, whose lines are needed to be shaded, and Ji Fa, a zhizi, who would speak as a hot-tempered young warrior.

His efforts paid off. When the film was released overseas, including in the US, France and Germany, it was easily understood.

"I understand the importance for China to showcase more of its history, culture, and current film industry, as well as its entertainment capabilities to the world. I want China to present a multifaceted image to the world. I want my friends in America and Europe to have a better understanding of China, and film is one of the most direct and effective ways to create that emotional connection between people," says the impassioned artist.

Since completing his duties at the Beijing festival, Phillips has continued filming Out of Order, an adaptation of the farce by English playwright Ray Cooney, winner of the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy.

The film, which is being produced by Mahua FunAge, a successful Beijing-based comedy production company, is set to be shot just a 10-minute drive from Yanqi Lake.

Phillips says that he plays the role of a famous lawyer in the story, which is set in the 1940s, and who is secretly dating his rival's female assistant at a hotel, only to discover an unidentified male corpse outside the window, setting off a chain of absurd events.

"My character has absolutely no morals, no qualms, no conscience, and he's a sex maniac. In portraying him, I want the audience to watch him and think, 'My goodness, everything he's doing is so horrible, but I still can't help but like him'," he says as he bursts into laughter.

As a public figure without Facebook, Twitter or Instagram accounts, and only having a Sina Weibo account, he maintains a cautious stance toward the latest technological developments, such as artificial intelligence.

"I'm particularly concerned for art because art comes out of the human spirit and the human emotional experience. It's a communication between humans from the artist's expression, whether it's a film, a painting, or a novel. I don't know that AI-generated art is what I would call art," he says.

For an icon like Phillips, who has shone for four decades, the conclusion by writer, publisher and host Xu Zhiyuan is perhaps one of the most fitting. Then a fourth-grader at a primary school in Beijing, Xu recalls a strong impression of Phillips wearing black pants, a short red top and black bow tie while performing at the 1987 Spring Festival Gala. In his interview for the online program Shisan Yao (Thirteen Invitations), Xu spent three days with Phillips and said that the star resembled a character from a fairy tale, like "someone stepping out of a Woody Allen film, exuding mystery".

Contact the writer at xufan@chinadaily.com.cn