DOWN TO EARTH: Lee has no airs about him and he does not forget his roots - growing up poor in Malacca. -- ST PHOTO: ALAN LIM

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'The shoulder's the best for roast pork, it has a nice bit of fat,' he recommends.

But if you are doing stir-fry dishes, 'you need lean meat, in which case the loin is the best', he says, hands reaching backwards to pat his lower back.

If the 37-year-old sounds like a savvy butcher, that is because he was once an assistant to one.

Lee, who grew up in a village in Malacca, was 14 years old then.

'Every morning, from seven to 10, I would help the butcher pack and wrap while he chops and carves. After that, I would deliver lard to hawker stalls before going home to shower and get ready for school in the afternoon,' he says.

The gig earned him $5 a day, which helped to defray expenses in his cash-strapped family.

'Money was hard to come by. I was already working part-time, packing preserved plums and dried fruit when I was nine,' says Lee, who has an elder sister and two younger brothers.

His father was a bookkeeper in a beehoon factory and his mother, a housewife.

In his baggy olive cargo pants, faded V-necked tee and blindingly orange Junya Watanabe sneakers, Lee looks every inch the stylish celebrity in the coffeehouse of the Four Seasons Hotel.

Talking to him, however, reminds one of the old chestnut: You can take a boy out of the kampung but you can never take the kampung out of the boy.

The congenial Malaysian affects none of the self- conscious posturing peculiar to many local stars.

He guffaws often, peppers his Mandarin generously with Hokkien colloquialisms and is self-deprecatingly candid about his less-than-stellar scholastic achievements and humble background.

In school, he was one of those natural athletes who was happiest shooting hoops on the basketball court or executing grubber kicks on the rugby pitch. A very active sea scout, he also spent most weekends outdoors.

'But when it came to studying, I was 'stoned',' he says, referring to the stupor books always put him in.

Still, he managed to score 5As for his Sijil Rendah Peperiksaan, an examination taken by Secondary 3 students in Malaysia.

His O-level results, however, were disastrous and he managed only a few credits.

Private school was not an option, not when he had two brothers still in school.

'One night, a couple of my friends and I were sitting at a teh tarik stall at 3am when we decided to look for work in Singapore. By 7am, we were out of the front door. My mother couldn't stop crying,' he recalls.

He found work as a production operator at the now defunct Degussa factory in Bukit Merah, a German outfit which manufactured circuit boards.

Life then was far from glamorous.

He lived in the company hostel in Portsdown Road, paying $80 a month to share a flat with 12 colleagues.

'They were all males, so you can imagine how stinky and dirty the flat was,' he says drily.

Although he wanted to enrol in an interior design course, the high fees put paid to this dream.

'I earned $480 a month, maybe $600 with overtime. How to afford the fees when I had to help the family out?' he says.

He spent six years at the factory and had two relationships with female colleagues which did not work out.

'When my friends started graduating from university, I felt really inferior.

'I decided I couldn't continue working at the factory. At most, I'd just be made foreman. So what?,' he says.

He moved to Kuala Lumpur in 1994 and was starting to do well as a marketing executive with a transport company when he came in as first runner-up in Star Search 1995, the MediaCorp talent contest he had entered on a lark.

He was offered an acting contract with the station. However, he says his first couple of years were excruciating.

'I realised only after I've signed on that I might not have the talent. I had performance anxiety. I could not read or understand at least 40 per cent of my scripts,' he says.

He was also mocked for his spoken Mandarin which had a strong Malaysian accent.

'I was scolded on the set every day by producers and directors, and in front of other actors, even extras, for being such a block of wood. It was so stressful,' he says, cringing at the memory.

Fortunately, his survival instincts kicked in.

He worked at his craft and got rid of his accent within a year.

With his tall leading man looks, the 1.82m actor was given prominent roles in major productions such as Brave New World and The Price Of Peace.

Within a year, he found himself voted one of the station's Top 10 Most Popular Male Artistes. Save for 1999 and 2001, he has remained on that list since.

It probably did not hurt that he found a 'fairy godmother' in hairdresser David Gan.

'People such as Fann Wong and Zoe Tay kept telling him to help me so he approached me,' he says.

'I was new in the business then and already had another hairstylist. I thought he had an ulterior motive, so I said no,' he adds.

'But I soon realised that David is just this perfectionist who loves things and people who are nice and pretty or handsome. He can't tolerate imperfections and he just wants to help us,' says the actor who calls Gan 'Ah Bu' (Hokkien for mother) because 'he nags at and fusses over us like a mother'.

Over the years, Lee's hair has been cut spiky, dyed platinum and even permed into a mini-Afro by the diminutive crimper to the stars.

At the glitzy 1997 Star Awards, Gan and stylist Johnny Khoo dressed the actor - not in a tuxedo or a suit - but in a designer 'apron'. The outlandish get-up still gets talked about today, not least because it was worn over his shirt and pants.

'I'm an artiste. I don't mind experimenting and being bold. It's okay if not everyone likes a new look. It's more important to get a reaction.''

He adds: 'David has helped me a lot. He's the one who understands me most. I've not gone to any other hairstylist since.'

His good friend, businessman Lim Boon Hee, says Lee's strongest trait is his sense of loyalty to family and friends. The two have known each other since they were sea-scouts at 14.

'He may be a celebrity but he will call me and a few other friends - without fail - each time he's back in Malacca. He has no airs.'

The 38-year-old businessman adds that Lee is one of the most filial men he knows.

The actor bought his parents - who are in their 60s - a double-storey house in Malacca three years after joining the then Television Corporation of Singapore (TCS). He also put his younger brothers, aged 33 and 34, through school. One is now an actor in Kuala Lumpur, the other an engineer in Malacca.

Lee's good looks and sartorial sense were not the only things which have put him in the constant glare of the limelight.

In a case of art imitating life, he has also won the heart of Fann - the Princess of Caldecott Hill.

The photogenic pair have been cast as lovebirds in several serials adapted from Chinese novels and folk tales including Return Of The Condor Heroes, Madam White Snake and Moon Fairy.

They went public only earlier this year although their relationship began at least six or seven years earlier.

He is well aware of catty remarks which suggest that he is not good enough for Fann, who has a more successful career. The actress has starred in several movies including the Hollywood hit Shanghai Knights (2003) with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson.

'It's pointless to get upset by such talk. It's not as if I am sitting around, doing nothing. I work hard too but the market for male artistes here is just not as big,' he says.

But just when love, life and career seemed to be going swimmingly for the actor, he got into trouble with the law.

In the early hours of Oct 8, 2006, a drunk Lee injured a motorcylist and his pillion rider in a hit- and-run accident. He was picked up near Mustafa Centre after the collision in Kitchener Road. It was not clear what he was doing there but when he was arrested, he was alone in his Mercedes-Benz.

He pleaded guilty and was jailed for six weeks. He was also fined $4,500 and banned from driving for three years.

He does not shy away from the topic when it is brought up.

Asked how he felt after the accident, he says: 'I thought everything - career, future - was finished.

'How to face my girlfriend, family, fans? There was a big stone on my heart,' adds Lee who blames the episode on fear and stupidity.

He avoided the press.

'There was nothing to explain. I had to take responsibility. I just wanted to be left alone to settle it by myself.'

He met all sorts of people in the slammer, including those who faced long-term imprisonment.

'It didn't matter who I was outside prison. Inside, I was like everyone else. I would have gone mad if I had behaved as though I was someone special.'

He is very thankful that his MediaCorp contract and his permanent resident status were not terminated. In fact, he went straight back to work after his release in June last year.

His fans have been seeing a lot of him lately - as a randy bar owner in the volleyball drama Beach. Ball.Babes; and a company CEO in A Mobile Love Story.

Next month, viewers will see him as a host for the first time in Life Transformers, a 10-part variety series.

'I'm just very, very lucky that my employers, fans and loved ones stood by me,' he says, adding that he now does not get into a car if the driver has had a couple of drinks.

Not that he is a teetotaller, though.

'What happened to me happened not because I drank but because I drank and drove,' he says.

He has put the chapter firmly behind him. There are other more pressing issues at hand, like planning his marriage.

The actor proposed to Fann on the second day of the Chinese New Year with a two-carat diamond ring in front of his family and friends.

'Do you know how difficult it was to propose to her? I wanted to do it last Christmas. She was away. I wanted then to book a restaurant and do it on New Year's Day. She was not in town again,' he says, with a mock sigh.

'Valentine's Day? She was in the Soviet Union. She was with me during Chinese New Year so I thought I'd do it then, especially since it was a happy occasion.'

The date for the big day has not been set but it will 'definitely be next year'. Neither the venue nor what the celebrations would entail have been decided.

And what bling will he shower on her this time?

'Aiyoh, tolong, tolong. Can you please spare me? I really cannot talk about it.'

kimhoh@sph.com.sg

flashback

'Life in showbusiness is not necessarily more complex than in a factory. In a factory, people backstab too. They fight for increments and do all sorts of things for overtime. Every business is complex'
On life as a factory worker. He was one for six years

'When I jump into a cab sometimes, the driver will ask me why I'm not driving. I'll say: "Uncle, you forget already, ah? Where can drive? Still got two more years, leh" '
On how he makes light of his drink-driving incident which got him a $4,500 fine, six weeks in prison and a three-year driving ban. He is seen with girlfriend Fann Wong, whom he will be marrying next year

'Some people said playing convicts will be a cinch for me in future since I've been in jail. To that, I just say: "Fang pi" (Mandarin for what flatulence)'

'Because he was tall and good-looking, it was boring going with him to parties. The girls would just go to him. And yet, he was useful when we wanted to get girls to join us. They would say 'yes' if he was going'
Businessman Lim Boon Hee, 38, who has known Christopher Lee for more than 20 years