Jimmy Wong Shee-tong (20 September 1943 – 10 April 2021) was a Hong Kong screen actor and action director, brother of the actress Wong Man-wai and father of the voice actor Wong Wing-cheung. Of Chaoyang, Guangdong, descent, he was raised in Macau and later on Nathan Road in Yau Tsim Mong, Kowloon; his father taught at a secondary school. After finishing secondary school he first meant to join the police, but in 1965 his sister answered an advertisement for a new acting class at the Sin Hok Kong Luen film company and was accepted; three months later he followed, and after graduating learned action performance from the martial arts directors Liu Chia-liang and Tong Gaai on The Black Musketeer, appearing frequently in Hong Kong films by the early 1970s. From 1976 he worked simultaneously as action director and performer for RTV and in films. In 1979 he appeared in and choreographed Tsui Hark's The Butterfly Murders, and was recruited by Television Broadcasts, playing the swordsman in Chor Lau-heung. In 1981 he signed with the Pearl City film company, where he made his debut as both director and actor. From October 1986 he served Asia Television for more than a decade in dozens of serials, best known as the wise uncle Ho Ying-kau in the My Date with a Vampire series, a nickname that stuck; he left the station after the third instalment in 2004. He later worked in Southeast Asia and in 2015 won a best-actor title in Vietnam for the series Unbreakable. In 2020 he received a distinguished service award from the Hong Kong Stuntmen Association. Diagnosed with stage-two colon cancer in 2018, he recovered after surgery but suffered a relapse in December 2020, and died of organ failure on 10 April 2021, aged 77.
Wong spent more than a decade at Asia Television, where his character Uncle Kau became well loved; trained in martial arts under Liu Chia-liang and Tong Gaai, he worked as both actor and action director, witnessing Hong Kong action cinema's passage from television wuxia to film, and continued acting in Southeast Asia.
Achievements
- 1965 · Followed his sister into the acting class of the Sin Hok Kong Luen film company and learned action performance from Liu Chia-liang and Tong Gaai
- 1979 · Appeared in and choreographed Tsui Hark's The Butterfly Murders and joined Television Broadcasts the same year
- 1998 · Played Ho Ying-kau in My Date with a Vampire, the role that became his signature
- 2020 · Received a distinguished service award from the Hong Kong Stuntmen Association