Female Beauty

The famous Hong Kong actor has quit show biz over the scandal of female celebrities racy pictures. Edison Chen, 27, said on Thursday, 21 Feb, he would step away from the Hong Kong entertainment industry to “heal himself”, in his first public appearance since a sex scandal broke. Chen admitted to taking the photos, and profusely apologised to all those that were hurt by the incident, which at least eight female celebrities are thought to be involved, including actress, Bobo Chan, Cecilia Cheung, singers Joey Yung and Gillian Chung.

“I stand before you to account for myself. I’ve never escaped responsibility before. I admit the pictures were taken by me. They were private pictures and never intended to be shown to the public. They were stolen from me illegally, and distributed without my consent. I would like to apologise to those affected by what has happened. Apologise to all the ladies and their families,” he said to a packed press conference.

“I’ve decided to step away from Hong Kong show business, and do some soul searching, and will do charity and community work in the next few months. My priority is to stop the suffering and pain. We don’t want this situation to get out of control. In this regard, I’ve instructed my lawyers to protect all the innocent victims in this case,” he said.

The Canada-born singer also sounded a cautionary note to youngsters who look up to celebrities as role models.
“I’ve failed you all as a role model. To all (the) young people out there, let this be a lesson to you. I hope you can forgive me, give me another chance.”

Edison Chen has issued a video statement in which he apologised to anyone affected by “this strange, strange ordeal.”
It started in January 2008 when nude photos of the actor’s engaged in sexual acts with each other were distributed on the internet. Hong Kong police said some 1,300 of sexually explicit pictures and a steamy video shot by Cantopop icon Edison Chen with at least a dozen female singers and actresses who have shared his bed had been copied by the staff of a computer repair shop from a faulty laptop believed to belong to Chen.

The stars’ loss of dignity has been a big gain for entrepreneurial Chinese. Illegal downloads of the pictures are being sold on the streets in mainland China for prices ranging from 10 yuan ($1.40) to 30 yuan ($4.20). Chinese media said police in the southern city of Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong, had arrested 10 people suspected of producing, selling and purchasing compact discs of the photos.

The Beijing Association of Online Media, a government-backed watchdog, has praised some sites for removing the images and demanded that Baidu apologise for allowing its users to find them. “Baidu still hasn’t implemented effective blocking and obscuring of the photos,” it said, adding that the search engine had “become defensive” and “procrastinated”.

Pornography is officially banned in China and the internet is restricted and closely monitored by the government.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Celebrity News, Gossip, Relationship, Sexual Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.