Isabella Leong believes in destiny. “If something is meant to be, it’ll happen,” is something of a recurring theme that runs through our entire conversation, from the very first anecdote she tells me to the last.
Photography and creative direction ISSAC LAM
Styling BHISAN RAI
Make-up ANNA WONG
Hair SAM LO
Styling assistant SERENE CHEUNG and NISHAM LIMBU
Make-up assistant EDEN
Photography assistants TOM TONG, JASON LI and RIKI CHAN
We’re at a horse-riding centre where we’re doing our cover photoshoot. She’s never really ridden a horse. “But I love all animals,” she says as she gets acquainted with the young gelding who’s sniffing out her pockets. She laughs and pats his neck gently, as the trainer hands her some treats that are quickly gobbled down. “I love all animals and I have two cats that I adopted after I found them on a mountain.”
She was hiking with her friends when she discovered three kittens, abandoned and malnourished, and the moment she set eyes on the cats she knew it was fate. She kept two of them, and a friend took the third. “I just knew I had to take them home and take care of them. They’re my babies now.”
Her cats, now bright-eyed and healthy, appear often on her Instagram, which she uses to share snippets of her personal life. Reflecting on the moment she took them in, she wrote, “It was like looking into a bottomless lake when I looked into the cats’ eyes and I felt a gentleness surge through my heart. They spelled out fate for me, and at that moment I understood that when fate arrives it can’t be pushed away. Without hesitation, I very carefully took them home. Life isn’t always beautiful, but now I have a pair of beauties waiting for me every day.”
Leong is cheerful, polite and completely Zen, like the type of friend everyone would want in their circle. And yet the actor rarely gives interviews – understandably so, as the media have pried, documented and dissected her life without permission for years, from the day she struck up a relationship in 2008 with a prominent Hong Kong businessman, to the day their romance came to an end in 2011. She’s an incredibly successful actor and singer, with five music albums and multiple successful movies such as Bug Me Not and Isabella, which won her a Best New Performer award at the Golden Bauhinia Awards. She’d got her first Hollywood role and her career was on the rise, and yet all anyone cared about was her life choices, not her achievements.
Leong met her former partner on the set of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Explorer and fell deeply in love – she put her career on hold when her first son Ethan was born in 2009, followed by twin boys in 2010. I put it to her that motherhood was an incredible achievement by itself, as was raising three boys well.
Leong smiles. “I’ve always wanted to have a family and I’ve always wanted children,” she says with conviction. Her boys will always come first.
Still, with so few interviews behind her, it’s not easy finding out who the real Isabella Leong is. Her childhood was hard and though lovingly raised by a single mother, she never had a father figure. Similarly, raising three children on her own couldn’t have been easy either – she may have had an entourage but was far from home and living with unwanted attention.
I ask her what she’d have told her child and young-mother selves, looking back now. “I’d tell my 12-year-old self that life has its ups and downs and it’s OK to have regrets,” she says. “I think every experience, good or bad, helped shape the way I am. Wherever I’m going, I’d always tell myself to be strong, persevere and be determined.”
She’d tell her 20-year-old self the same thing. “I always remembered my mum taught me that the hardest road always leads to a way out.”
Conceding that her childhood was tough, she says no more, except that when she was in primary school, she only thought of escape when asked to contemplate her future. “I was in primary two or three and we had an assignment where we needed to write down what we wanted to be in the future. All my classmates wrote things like, lawyer, teacher, doctor and so on. But I wanted to be a butterfly. Because then I could fly freely. Perhaps just to escape judgment. I felt that life was hard and it was difficult to see my mum working long hours.”
Leong and her mother are very close. “I deeply admire my mother’s love for my sister and I,” she says. “She was the one who raised us all on her own and I think she was very brave. My childhood was difficult but I’m glad to have my mum’s unconditional love and support. She’s always there for me.”
As she’s now there for her sons. “I always encourage my children to be humble and responsible,” she says. “I make sure they don’t develop a sense of entitlement, regardless of their background. I don’t want them to take everything for granted. I want them to experience life. Sometimes life is tough, but you have to persevere, be strong and be determined.”
She’d moved to Canada to allow her boys to live a normal childhood, where they do chores and earn their pocket money like everyone else. Her children have known their mother was an actor since they were young –“I showed them my very first movie, Bug Me Not, where I was acting with a bug, and they loved watching it!” Since she was 12, Leong knew she wanted to be in the entertainment industry, but her boys, now in their teens, have no such ambitions. “Sometimes I take them along with me to work, just to try and show them at first-hand what it’s like to be on set,” Leong says. “They’re fascinated, but they say, ‘Mum, I always thought this entertainment thing was an easy job,’ but in reality it’s a lot of hard work.”
Leong and her family only returned to Hong Kong in 2017 when she felt the time was right for her to resuscitate her career. “I spent 10 years in Canada, but my home is always back in Hong Kong and Macau,” she says. “So when I moved back in 2017, I was happy to come home. I just felt a bit lonely raising the boys in Canada.”
Her boys quickly – and happily – adjusted to Hong Kong too. “Life in Canada was just a bit too boring,” Leong says, laughing. Her sons are very much into sports, as many 14 and 15-year-olds are, and she’s looking at overseas sports camps to send them to for the summer. “Three boys,” she says with an amused look, as if asking me what I’d expect. “The house is always full of noise.”
But happy noises. Sounds of contentment – screeches and laughter and great, dragged-out bellows of “Mom!” that she can live with and even meditate through. Leong is a Buddhist and meditates every day – though, she explains, “Usually I’ll meditate when the boys are in school, as it’s quieter.”
Converting to Buddhism accounts for much of how Leong views life today. Buddhists are taught to be kind to all living things, and perhaps Leong has learned to be kind to herself too. “I was a different person before,” she reflects. “I had a lot of anger. But now I’m at peace and I really believe in fate. Whatever happens, happens for a reason.”
It’s with this renewed sense of clarity and purpose that Leong is stepping back into her acting career, which she loves. In 2015, she acted in actor and director Sylvia Chang’s Murmur of the Hearts, a Hong Kong-Taiwan romantic drama that was screened at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. At the time it was touted as her comeback. Chang, along with family and friends, had encouraged her to go back to what she loved to do. But much as she loved working with Chang, looking back she believes she still wasn’t ready. Now, she is. Her most recent role was in last year’s Bursting Point, in which her portrayal of a drug manufacturer reveals a maturity beyond her years. “I’m glad for all my experiences, because I could channel my emotions on camera,” she says, smiling. Currently reading through several scripts, she starts shooting a new movie this month.
“I know myself better than anyone else,” she says. Asked if she has plans to try Hollywood again, she answers, “Why not? I also love Korean movies, so perhaps I could try working in Korea. I don’t speak the language, but I can learn!”
She’s staying open-minded. “I’m going with the flow, because I want to enjoy each day,” she says. “Life is full of surprises and you just can’t plan things out, because there are too many surprises. I’ve learned how to be flexible and adapt to our situation.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she adds. “This doesn’t mean I’m sitting back and doing nothing. I’m always prepared and hopeful for the future. But I’ve learned that it’s all about appreciating and accepting all the different experiences that are presented to me.”
Leong is completely self-assured and in control. You can’t help but feel she’s come to terms with herself and her past, and that she’s never been more certain about where she’s been and where she’s going next. And we couldn’t be happier for her.
The information in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.
