It has been 10 years since his last big screen outing.

But China actor Zhang Fengyi, best known for his role as a Chinese opera singer in acclaimed director Chen Kaige's Farewell My Concubine (1993), has not been twiddling his thumbs.

"I have not been in semi-retirement. I have been filming TV series as they are very popular in China now," he says at a press conference held at Swissotel The Stamford's Equinox.

The 51-year-old was in town to promote his latest project, the war epic Red Cliff, along with director John Woo and fellow cast members Chang Chen and Chiling Lin.

The film emerged triumphant at Singapore's weekend box office with S$1.03 million (US$764,000) in takings. It eclipsed Peter Chan's period epic The Warlords, which made S$925,000 (US$686,000) in its opening weekend last year.

On the small screen, Zhang's output includes the award-winning military dramas The Age Of Peace (1997) and History's Sky (2005).

There was also the fact that "the film industry in China went into a downturn and it was all small-scale movies".

He adds: "It was quite sad really, some had a budget of just 1 million yuan (US$147,000). Over half the movies made did not find an audience."

So when Woo offered him the chance to take part in such a major production, the graduate of the prestigious Beijing Film Academy readily agreed.

"He is a senior figure but he's more like a big brother. He's very macho and his films are about the aesthetics of violence and tragic and failed heroes. But on the set, he's a gentleman and when problems arise, he deals with them in an unruffled manner," Zhang says.

In Red Cliff, he plays Cao Cao, the ambitious chancellor of the Eastern Han dynasty who battles southern warlords Liu Bei and Sun Quan.

While the Chinese literary classic Romance Of The Three Kingdoms and Chinese opera have vilified Cao Cao, Woo's approach is to humanise the man.

Zhang argues that villainy is relative.

Despite being branded a traitor, from a historical viewpoint, Cao Cao was, after all, still a Han official. He was also the one who unified northern China, and if he had succeeded at the battle of Red Cliff, he would have unified the whole of China.

Despite the production's lengthy and troubled shoot, during which a stuntman died in an accident last month, Zhang approached it with professional calm.

He says: "I'm now like a skilled worker. You give me a blueprint and I can tell you 'Okay, this is not a problem' or 'I need to discuss it a little further with the engineer. Maybe there needs to be some adjustment here'.

"And that's all there is to it." (By BOON CHAN/ The Straits Times/ ANN)