http://www.sfgate.com/    TRUE TALE OF CHANGE FOR THAI KICKBOXER - Hugh Hart Sunday, January 23, 2005 Nong Toom, Thailand's most famous -- and only -- transgender kickboxing champion, swept into a Los Angeles restaurant recently wearing high- heeled boots, tight jeans and a form-fitting beige and pink blouse. With jet- black hair tumbling past her broad shoulders, the statuesque beauty radiated the guarded demeanor of a diva who's accustomed to fending off curiosity- seekers. In southeast Asia, after all, Toom is routinely mobbed by fans who view her the way Americans once regarded Muhammad Ali or Marilyn Monroe. But the frost thaws a little when Toom started giggling about her flight from Spain, where she left immigration officials in a state of charmed befuddlement. Through an interpreter, she explained, "In Thailand, they won't let you change your gender salutation on your passport from Mr. to Ms. so the immigration man looking at my papers was nice but seemed very confused. He asked me, am I married? No? You're so pretty. Why not married?" It's a long story. As told in "Beautiful Boxer," the new film from Thai writer-director Ekachai Uekrongtham, Nong Toom was raised by impoverished peasants who eked out a living from the Thai jungle soil. Toom briefly joined a Buddhist monastery but was dismissed for wearing makeup. He then apprenticed with a traveling monk before stumbling onto a camp that trained teenage kickboxers. There, he discovered a gift for swooping kicks, flying elbows and a sledgehammer uppercut. Toom had a hard time concealing his transgender tendency from the macho boxers he trained with. "In boxing camp at the beginning," Toom says, "I had to act straight because I was afraid a fellow kickboxer would laugh at me if I started to show my true self. But you can't hide forever your true nature. It starts to seep out." Once Toom began winning matches, she began wearing makeup in the ring and performed pre-fight dance routines that outraged traditionalists. At one time, her detractors even included director Uekrongtham. "I must admit when I first heard about Toom 10 years ago, I had a lot of negative feelings toward her," says Uekrongtham, who joined Toom and actor Asanee Suwan for lunch. "Thai kickboxing is something very sacred. It's not something to be made fun of and I thought Toom may have tarnished the image of Thai kickboxing in the eye of the international community." Still, the apparent contradictions were simply too rich to walk away from, Uekrongtham notes. "I thought Toom was such a walking paradox: someone who sets out to master such a masculine sport in order to achieve his dream of becoming a woman. That's such a crazy, built-in conflict, and being a dramatist, I realized her life could be a great story for movie." Uekrongtham met with Toom shortly after she'd had her sex change operation in 1999. Toom says, "I felt more happiness after the operation, because for as long as I could remember, I'd always felt like I was temporarily resting in a body that was not mine," she says. "I liked anything a girl likes -- makeup, games, the way they walk, the flowers. But when you do those things in the body of a man, that seemed inappropriate. When I'd put on makeup, to me it was beautiful, but to others looking at me, they probably thought I was a freak or something. You try to do what your heart says because it caused me a lot of turmoil to depend on a body that's the wrong gender." It was up to Suwan to portray Toom and her turmoil onscreen. His fight credentials were impeccable. A kickboxer since age 12, Suwan has won several Thai fight tournaments. But to pass the audition, he also had to look good in makeup and a wig. "The first thing I realized," he says between bites of a rib-eye steak, "Is that it took so bloody long to get all the makeup on. My breasts were made of socks. I had to wear high heels and kept tripping. When I looked in the mirror, I thought I looked like a ghost. A female ghost." Suwan spent a year mastering the moves and mien of his role model. He went on "dates" with Toom. He took charm school classes attended by beauty pageant contestants and learned how to walk the womanly walk. "If you swing your hips too much, it looks low class," Suwan says. "Sometimes women on the street would look at me like I was a sick man because I'd be staring at them so long studying how they moved." One morning, he recalls, he woke up to "a warm feeling on my legs. I discovered they were waxing my legs. That's one of the things that made me realize, it's really hard being a woman, especially a good-looking woman." Suwan was also instructed by Uekrongtham to study ballet. "I discovered dance and kickboxing weren't all that different on a certain level," Suwan says. "People tend to think that dance movements are very effeminate and simple, but having gone through the ballet training myself, I realize for that kind of dancing, just like with fighting, you need a lot of focus and determination." Toom interjects, "And flexibility." "People think of kickboxing as being this very violent sport, but it's also artistic," Uekrongtham says. "Some boxers are very strong but their moves don't look nice, so we also judge fighters by saying this is a beautiful boxer because of the way they swing their legs and so on." Toom proved herself in the ring on both counts, gracefully winning 20 out of 22 matches while earning enough money to liberate her family from their hand-to-mouth existence. Along the way, she became comfortable enough with her own sexuality to show her true colors in public. "I felt on par with the other fighters -- I was never late for training and I worked just as hard as anyone else so I could win, and that gave me more confidence to come out." "Beautiful Boxer," released last April in Asia, became a box-office sensation there, earning Suwan a Supannahongsa Award, the Thai Oscar equivalent, for best actor. How did Toom, who is now a Bangkok-based actress and model, feel about seeing her life story dramatized on the big screen? "I wondered at first if my life was worthy enough to be made into a film because usually, people make films about heroes and I don't think I'm a hero," she says. "So I felt very touched that there was a film about my life, but I was very stressed the first time I watched it, trying to predict what would happen next." Toom regained her composure and saw "Beautiful Boxer" again. "The second time, I was able to laugh at myself and all the silly things I'd done. But I was quite moved by other parts. By the end of the movie, I wish I had put on waterproof mascara." BEAUTIFUL BOXER (not rated) is playing in Bay Area theaters. Hugh Hart is a Chronicle correspondent. Page 22 URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/a/2005/01/23/PKGPOAPQ1P1.DTL ©2005 San Francisco Chronicle