'The more flesh you show, the further up the ladder you go'

LOLETTA Lee Lai-chun sat on a rickety stool, mirror held close, applying a few industrial-strength layers of foundation. As she widened her eyes to inspect the progress, the image was far less of a film star preparing for work than your average pretty Giordano shop girl getting ready for a Friday night out in Tsim Sha Tsui East.

How many times a day have you seen it . . . the gym-slip figure and the ubiquitous jeans-sweatshirt-and-Reeboks look. It seemed the only signs of Hongkong stardom were the car Lee drove to the Fanling location shoot - the sort of BMW coveted by cadres a few kilometres to the north - and the junior technician shyly seeking an autograph.

If Giordano girls drove limos, it would have been easy to believe she had sold you a $99 cardigan the day before. Yet here was one of the hottest sex symbols of the moment, a woman earning millions, while real-life shop girls spend their lunch breaks scanning the gossip pages for the Latest On Loletta.

A year ago, Lee was in a career rut. Eight years of minor roles, usually playing the cardboard-cutout teenager in the likes of the Happy Ghost and It's a Mad Mad World movie series, had failed to propel her into Maggie Cheung or Anita Mui territory.

Then came the career move, and Loletta Lee is a born-again Category III star.

The career move may have been invented in Hollywood, but in Hongkong it has matured to a fine art. Veronica Yip has been there. So has namesake Amy.

It involves the initial shedding of clothes and the careful manipulation of publicity.