Kevin Spacey may be the first Hollywood A-lister to star in a Chinese film, but he won't be the last.

"I think there's no doubt that China is the next place for film ... and that collaborations, this kind of exchange of a Western actor coming to make a Chinese film is a very exciting step," said Spacey, who has just finished his part in Inseparable (Xingying Buli), in Guangzhou, southern China.

The Oscar winner plays a mysterious expat living in Guangzhou who befriends a young engineer. It marks the first time a bona fide Hollywood star has played a 100 percent domestically financed production in China.

"Firstly, Dayyan Eng who's the director and also the writer, is an incredibly talented young emerging filmmaker," Spacey says, explaining why he wanted to do the movie in a recent interview with CNN's Talk Asia. "The story struck me as very genuine, very modern, addressed lots of issues and problems in a very clever very funny way."

Eng, a Chinese-American director, sent the script to Spacey's agency a year ago and negotiations went surprisingly smoothly.

"I love sort of feeling like I'm just slightly ahead of the curve and this was an opportunity to come to a country that I've always wanted to come to," Spacey says.

The Chinese film market has boomed in recent years with box office revenues showing continuous annual growth of more than 25 percent since 2002, to $910 million in 2009.

Last year, Will Smith collaborated with China Film Group and Jackie Chan to produce The Karate Kid, in which his son Jaden Smith plays Chan's disciple.

Hugh Jackman also traveled to Shanghai earlier this year for a cameo role in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, a Chinese film about women's friendship in ancient times.

But while the flourishing film market here is something Hollywood wants to tap into, China's quota of only 20 foreign films a year could be a negative factor in East-West collaborations. Spacey, however, seems optimistic about the issue.

"I ultimately can't speak for anybody but I suspect that things are moving in a direction where that may shift, that may change," he says.

Working on a Chinese set was a comfortable experience for Spacey.

"So many things about this experience are like any film set," he says.

"I'm still having the same kind of experience that I have anywhere I go, because I think if you engage with people and you try to be a part of creating an environment where people are doing good work and feel happy to come to work and there's no obstacle and false tension and behavior that's odd, you can have a really, really good time.

"So there's been so much laughter and so much sort of kidding around with everybody, even though we don't necessarily speak the same language."

The director Eng spoke highly of Spacey's professionalism.

"It's been really nice working with him," he says. "He is not fussy at all and engages himself with the environment very quickly. He is very professional and took our working schedule of 12 hours a day well."

The film is expected in theaters in August.

(China Daily March 19, 2010)