Lo Lieh was born Wong Lap-tat on 29 June 1939 in Pematangsiantar in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, to Cantonese parents who were farmers, and died of a heart attack in Shenzhen on 2 November 2002, aged 63. He studied xingyi quan and tai chi from childhood and moved from Indonesia to Hong Kong as a teenager. In 1962 he joined Shaw Brothers as a first-generation member of its acting training programme, and appeared first in Chang Cheh's The Butterfly Chalice (1965) and in Chang's Golden Swallow before rising to prominence with The Invincible Fist in 1969; that year he also appeared in Hsu Cheng-hung's Twelve Deadly Coins. He took his first leading role in 1970, and his 1972 film King Boxer, directed by Cheng Chang-ho and also known as Five Fingers of Death, was widely released in American cinemas, ranking among the top-grossing films in the United States. That success made him a favourite screen villain and led to a string of English-language kung fu movies, making him one of the first Hong Kong action stars to break into the international market. His hard build and agile fighting suited him to ferocious villain roles, and Shaw cast him constantly. Over four decades he appeared in more than a hundred Shaw films, usually as a villain, a hardened fighter or a formidable master, and was one of the studio's most in-demand antagonists in the 1970s; he also directed and starred in some of his own pictures. In the 1990s he moved into television as a long-serving Asia Television artiste, appearing in series such as I Come from Guangzhou and Heroes — Ten Tigers of Guangdong. In later years he did business on the mainland and ran an acting school.
Lo's King Boxer was among the first Hong Kong films to open widely in American cinemas, carrying Shaw's kung fu output into the international market and making him a familiar villainous face in the West. Across more than a hundred Shaw titles his hard-edged strongman image became one of the signatures of 1970s martial-arts cinema.
Achievements
- 1962 · Joined Shaw Brothers as a first-generation member of its acting training programme
- 1969 · Rose to prominence with The Invincible Fist
- 1972 · Starred in King Boxer, later widely released in American cinemas