Comedy king Stephen Chow works with both in his latest film, CJ7, which opens in Singapore tomorrow.

But neither child star nor canine character reared their heads at his press conference here earlier this week.

Instead, the director-actor, famous for his proteges who have included the likes of Karen Mok and Cecilia Cheung, shared the limelight with Chinese starlet Kitty Zhang, in the process dispelling rumours of a rift between the two.

Zhang, 19, is caring teacher Ms Yuen in Chow's sci-fi comedy CJ7. Chow himself plays a poor labourer called Ti who finds a toy dog that turns out to be an alien christened Chang Jiang No.7, or CJ7 for short.

But stealing the attention from everyone in the movie is 10-year-old actress Xu Jiao, a former unknown from the picturesque city of Hangzhou, who, in a gender-bending role, plays Chow's son Dicky.

Read the full story in Life! in Wednesday's edition of The Straits Times.