Derek Yee Tung-sing was born in Hong Kong on 28 December 1957 into a film family: his father Yee Kwong was a producer and director of the 1950s and 60s, his mother Hung Wei an actress and voice artist, and his half-brothers Paul Chun and David Chiang well-known actors. Joining Shaw Brothers as an actor before he was twenty, he appeared in more than fifty films, among them Chu Yuan's Death Duel as the swordsman Hsieh Hsiao-feng; his dashing warrior image made him a leading man of 1970s wuxia cinema. He turned director in 1986 with The Lunatics, a drama about former mental-health patients that indicted society's indifference to the vulnerable and stirred controversy for its sensitive subject. His 1993 film C'est la vie, mon cheri, a romance between a terminally ill girl and a musician starring Anita Yuen and Lau Ching-wan, won Best Film, Best Director and Best Screenplay at the 13th Hong Kong Film Awards, with Yuen taking Best Actress. Full Throttle (1996) brought him Best Director from the Hong Kong Film Critics Society. One Nite in Mongkok (2004), set over a single night and following a chase between police and a hired killer, won him Best Director and Best Screenplay at the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards. Protege (2007) examined the drug trade, starring Andy Lau and Louis Koo. I Am Somebody (2015) cast extras from Hengdian as its leads, documenting the lives of bit-part players and winning a strong reception on the mainland. Yee has also long worked as a writer and producer, drawing most of his subjects from social realism and the lives of marginalised people.
From The Lunatics and C'est la vie, mon cheri to Protege, Yee kept bringing social subjects such as mental illness, terminal disease and drug addiction into mainstream Hong Kong cinema, focusing on marginal lives.
Achievements
- 1977 · Joined Shaw Brothers as an actor and became a leading wuxia star of the 1970s, playing Hsieh Hsiao-feng in Death Duel.
- 1986 · Directed his first film, The Lunatics, a drama about former mental-health patients.
- 1994 · Won Best Director and Best Screenplay at the 13th Hong Kong Film Awards for C'est la vie, mon cheri.
- 2005 · Won Best Director and Best Screenplay at the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards for One Nite in Mongkok.