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“Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born), I’m not a big fan, but I’m sure tickled by her talent.”

Chow is a property master by title, but a jack-of-all-trades by necessity.

Photo by Francis Georgian / PNG

A fit and young-looking 70, he’s not exactly retired but has had the luxury of turning down work for four years now. Badminton, his warehouse (Avatar Prop & Design Inc.) and teaching film at Langara College occupy his days.

It’s quite a ways from his “show biz” beginnings in 1973 after he’d kicked around all sorts of odd jobs in theatre and music.

“CBC called and asked me to show up at 4 o’clock. My job was to clean (CBC weatherman) Bob Fortune’s blackboard,” Chow said. “I did such a great job, they called me back and asked if I would work New Year’s Eve, I said ‘yes sir.'”

That led to three years in Gibsons on the set of The Beachcombers and the launch of his career.

“The Beachcombers was my school,” Chow said.

And that led to Who’ll Save Our Children, directed by George Schaefer (still his favourite director) and then The Changeling, where he got to know George C. Scott.

Shipping News, Man of Steel, TRON: Legacy, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer, the list goes on and on.

Chow, who arrived with his mother in Canada as a two-year-old “with the shirts on our backs” escaping Mao’s China, would go on to work on 55 movies in total, the last one Warcraft: The Beginning.

Photo by Francis Georgian / PNG

Life-size cut-outs of Chow and Halle Berry, Chow and Juno star Ellen Page, Chow and Sharon Stone lean against a wall in his rumpus room.