John Lone makes controlled, guarded men convincing through physical precision. We admire his restraint in The Last Emperor, though there are stretches when it keeps us too far from the person we are meant to understand.
Fi1m perspective
In The Last Emperor (1987), John Lone plays the adult Pu Yi as someone accustomed to being watched. The reserve is persuasive, even when it makes him difficult to get close to. Bernardo Bertolucci gives us imperial ceremony that is fascinating and painfully lonely, and Lone belongs within its formality. We felt the loneliness of that household, where James Acheson’s costumes make looking properly dressed seem like another obligation.
The earlier films show other uses for that control. In Iceman (1984), his first major film role, he plays Charlie, a Neanderthal, in a physically demanding, largely non-verbal performance. He followed it with Joey Tai, the Chinatown gang leader in Year of the Dragon (1985). These parts offer useful comparisons with Pu Yi: Lone can make a character legible without much speech, but he can also make the expectation of respect convincing.
The Last Emperor brought Lone wider recognition, but its central performance also shows where his restraint can become a problem. We do not need Pu Yi to explain himself at every opportunity; the performance suits someone whose household has taught him to expect respect. But there are stretches when Lone gives us too little sense of what Pu Yi wants from another person. That is a real limitation in a film we warmly recommend.
The music helps. Su Cong, Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Byrne’s score supplies warmth without demanding that Lone make every thought visible. Bertolucci’s patience also gives us time to see how the imperial household determines Pu Yi’s expectations of others. These collaborators matter because Lone’s reserve works better when the film gives us other ways to feel close to him.
The opera singer Song Liling in M. Butterfly (1993) gave him another use for his Peking Opera background. His later credits include the triad figure Ricky Tan in Rush Hour 2 (2001), a reminder of how often he was cast as an authority figure. Start with The Last Emperor, provided you can tolerate a leading man who does not always let you in.
Biography
John Lone is a Chinese-American actor born on 13 October 1952 in Hong Kong. He trained from the age of seven at Hong Kong's Chin Chiu Academy in the Peking Opera style, studying singing, dance, acrobatics and classical Chinese theatre techniques for around a decade.
After moving to the United States, Lone studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and performed with the East West Players. He gained recognition for roles including Joey Tai in Year of the Dragon (1985) and the title character in Iceman (1984).
Lone is best known for portraying the adult Puyi in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor. Other notable film credits include M. Butterfly (1993), The Shadow (1994), Rush Hour 2 (2001) and War (2007). He is a retired actor.
