Nick Cheung was born and raised in the squatter settlement of Shek Kip Mei in Hong Kong, one of four children; his father was a policeman and his parents separated early, leaving his mother to bring the family up. He left school in Form Three and joined the Royal Hong Kong Police Cadet School, graduating in 1983 and going on to serve as a uniformed and then plain-clothes officer until he resigned in 1987. After a failed motor-trading business, an old classmate introduced him to Danny Lee's film company as a continuity man, and in 1989 Lee cast him in his first film, Thanks for Your Love. He joined ATV the same year, playing villains and tragic figures, and in 1990 took his first leading role in Lau Wai-keung's directorial debut. Moving to TVB in 1995, he broke through in 1998 as the villain Kam Leung-wang in the hit serial Secret of the Heart, which led Wong Jing to cast him in The Tricky Master (1999) as 'Fa Guat Lung', earning his first Best Supporting Actor nomination at the Hong Kong Film Awards. From 2002 he deliberately cut back on comedy and, working with Johnnie To and Dante Lam, shifted towards a sombre register. His performance as the kidnapper Hung in Dante Lam's Beast Stalker (2008) brought him Best Actor at the Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards, the 46th Golden Horse Awards, the 53rd Asia-Pacific Film Festival and the 28th Hong Kong Film Awards. In 2013 he trained for six months to play a washed-up MMA fighter in Unbeatable, winning Best Actor at the 16th Shanghai International Film Festival and again at the 33rd Hong Kong Film Awards; the film was also the year's highest-grossing Chinese-language release in Hong Kong. He has since directed Hungry Ghost Ritual, Keeper of Darkness, The Leaker and Peg O' My Heart, usually also writing and starring in them.
Nick Cheung rose from police constable and continuity man to multiple Best Actor wins, showing that persistence can carry a Hong Kong performer to the top. His layered portraits of outsiders in Beast Stalker and Unbeatable helped steer Dante Lam's action films towards character, and he later moved behind the camera as a director.
Achievements
- 2009 · Won Best Actor at the 28th Hong Kong Film Awards and the 46th Golden Horse Awards for 'Beast Stalker'
- 2014 · Won Best Actor at the 33rd Hong Kong Film Awards for 'Unbeatable'
- 2014 · Made his directorial debut with 'Hungry Ghost Ritual', also serving as writer