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Gold finger ring

Egyptian, Roman Period, probably 2nd century A.D.

John Lone - a mysterious actor spreads his wings in M. Butterfly

John Lone has his headiest role yet in M. Butterfly: a Beijing Opera diva who dazzled her French diplomat lover during their twenty-year affair, he overlooked the fact that the object of his affection was a man and a spy. Playwright David Henry Hwang took the 1986 newspaper accounts of this jaw-dropper and spun them into a meditation on gender, the nature of seduction, and mutual East/West stereotypes. Now director David Cronenberg has woven a film from the play’s silken ambiguities, with Jeremy Irons as the diplomat and Lone as the spy who loved him.  Trained in the Beijing Opera himself, John Lone has an  indelible way with epic figures, having played the 40,000-year-old Neanderthal in Iceman (1984) and Pu Yi in The Last Emperor (1987), as well as such contemporary egoists as a Chinatown triad princeling in Year of the Dragon (1985) and a cruelly powerful businessman in The Moderns (1988). Here he hints at how eerily well he was  born, or at least raised, to play Butterfly.

Sheila Benson: Among other things, M. Butterfly deals with the power of the so-called powerless.

John Lone: I play the perfect, submissive sex toy as perceived by this Caucasian man’s fantasy – non demanding, totally selfless. Which is not real; Chinese women are not like that.

Sheila: Glad to hear it. How did you become this ultimate sexual enigma?

John: I carry my work off camera because I take every opportunity I can to retain my character and make myself feel more comfortable. When I was preparing for the film for tree weeks, with David Cronenberg, I had a lady friend come over. We started talking, working on my character from a female point of view.

Sheila: You and she, not you and Jeremy Irons?

John: Jeremy and I never had the time to get together months before to try to work things out. Actors rarely do. The beauty of it is when you can just show up and hit the notes. What I needed were those three weeks with my lady friend, to do a lot of detailed work.

Sheila: What kinds of details?

John: I’m not involved with the female world. I don’t even see it. So, my friend and I started getting this girly-girlfriend thing going. Then we did exercises. I starting walking, restricting myself with a tight skirt. Symbolically, the first thing I did was shave, getting rid of the hair on my hands. It’s not a visual thing; it’s very physical. Once I got rid of this hair, I just became softer. I saw my skin, my being. And then I plucked my eyebrows, because that immediately transformed me.

Sheila: You didn’t shave them?

John: No, because Cronenberg didn’t want a drag-queen look. I wasn’t playing a drag queen-I was playing an extraordinary performer. Then, when I was shooting the film, I asked a male friend to come and be my escort. As a lady, this great actress, this vision of loveliness, I was just terrified of sitting there alone. I felt naked, almost. An extra-ordinary diva would never sit by herself. It sounds superficial, but it wasn’t.

Sheila: As a man, you’ve never had such feelings?

John: I never even think of it. But as a woman, I really started feeling vulnerable on the set, and I really felt that it was important that I should not be open for invitation or making myself look as though I was waiting for something. The truth is I didn’t need it, because I was being taken care of like a precious princess, but it really helped me. Psychologically, my friend made me feel protected. And then no one saw my real look, because I always presented myself off-camera like a diva. I don’t want to say “woman,” because that requires a vagina. But I always wrapped my hair in a turban. I bought neutral clothes, not female clothing but-what do you call it? – “timelessly classic” and spacious. I looked rather androgynous.

Sheila: What did this escort do to the film’s sexual balance?

John: It used to drive these women nuts on the set , because my friend is a very handsome, manly, sexy Japanese guy. The women tried to pick him up, but he was so devoted to our cause. These women-over thirty-five, a little hot to begin with; physically – would say, “John! What did you do to him?” They just couldn’t stand it, because we didn’t appear gay, didn’t appear to be a couple. But the fact that he was my warrior, guarding the princess–these women went insane. First, I can grow my own nails, then I get this man. Not a gay man or an obvious, passive assistant, but a samurai with a knife. My God.

Sheila: I am wondering how M. Butterfly is going to be taken in this age where gender is such a hot issue. We’ve had Clinton’s compromised stand on gays in the military. We’ve also had the contentious proposition that homosexuality may be a matter of genetics, after all.

John: I am not well educated or bright enough to be politically clued in, but I hope in the film that I’m going to shock a few people, win a lot of people over. I hope that I will make a lot of heterosexual men uneasy. I’m sure the drag queens will say this, the gay community will say that.

Sheila: What will you make straight men uneasy about?

John: About themselves, about feeling they may be attracted to Butterfly’s image. I don’t want to sound pompous, but I really think your gender doesn’t necessarily dominate your sexual activity. I think a lot of people personally know that. I speak from my personal experience. I’m just sort of what I am, which is sometimes limited, too.

Sheila: Are you limited?

John: I am limited in life, let’s face it. I have not lived so abundantly, full of family, full of continuity and history. But that’s my choice. I could have had all that, years ago. But I really want to be an artist, so therefore I have to live a little bit like a monk. I really need to be alone. I can’t deal with someone sleeping next to me.

Sheila: You must be aware of your own persona, which is mysterious, almost genderless.

John: I’m pretty knowing. I know people look at me and try to make conclusions about me immediately, based on the obvious, let’s say. And sometimes, I actually enjoy it. When I’m in front of heterosexual men-if we’re having a meeting, or whatever-from time to time I see this vulnerability in their body language and their face. Then I see their eyes glancing down to my lips, my mouth. Then I see them stop themselves, just shifting a little bit, just a little uneasy. I love it. I don’t go out of my way, but every time I get away with it, I do it.

Sheila: How did your Beijing Opera training affect the way you differentiate between the sexes?

John: I am truly weird. I don’t have the same experience most people have who were trained to be an actor. I grew up with art from the innocent age of ten –with art, but with no sense of identity. I have no prejudice against male or female. I  didn’t have parents, so I lived in people’s homes… And because I grew up with no parental role models, I learned to become my own friend, eventually my own father and my own mother. But I never grew up playing a man’s role. If you come from a normal family, you immediately start playing the role of a boy, a girl a man or a woman, but I’m sure you’ll agree with me that those are only roles, limited roles, at that. The point I’m trying to make is, I’m really quite neutral. I have not been conditioned.

Sheila: How did you come to be at the opera company?

John: When I was ten I was becoming a burden for these families, and I remember the old ladies saying, “He’s sort of pretty. Send him to this place where they take kids.” So, I lived at the Beijing Opera, I ate there, I learned a craft. And the money we made went into the company.

Sheila: Tell me about your life there.

John: I get up at 6:30. Go to the toilet. Nothing else – no water, nothing. Immediately tie my pants, go to a huge other room. Like little dogs we go to our sweat spots, permanent dark moons on the floor, made from our essence. We put our feet against the wall, upside down, supported by our hands for a half-hour. At seven-thirty, up to the roof and start screaming against stone walls to open the voice out, because we have no microphone and we play a one-thousand-seat theater. At eight, come down, drink hot water with salt to soothe the throat. Then acrobatic training for about two hours, then weaponry, in those big Victorian houses with high ceilings. Noontime comes. Lunch. We practice all day. Evening. More rehearsal and singing. Nine-thirty, ten, we go to bed. No time to sit around chattering, no TV, no magazines, no academic education. Now, would I send a son of mine to do that, even though I know it’s great training? No, never.

Sheila: Butterfly is such a sexual manipulator. Is that something you understand?