Chow Yun-fat (born 18 May 1955 on Lamma Island, Hong Kong), whose ancestral home is Kaiping, Guangdong, is an actor and photographer known as 'Fat Gor'. He grew up in a farming family of four children; his father was a seaman who was often away and his mother kept vegetables and chickens, and the household had no electricity, so as a boy he rose at four each morning to help sell cakes at the pier. The family moved to Kowloon in 1965, and after only three years of secondary school he left his studies, working as a porter, a postman and a salesman to help support the family. In 1973 he joined Television Broadcasts' third artist training class and became a leading TV star through long serials such as Hotel, A House Is Not a Home, The Giants, Conflict and Family Conflicts, above all with The Bund (1980), in which his Hui Man-keung became a household name across the Chinese-speaking world; he made his film debut in 1976. In 1986, playing the carefree gangster Mark in John Woo's A Better Tomorrow, he became a superstar; the film took over HK$34 million at the box office as the year's top earner and won him Best Actor at the 6th Hong Kong Film Awards. He won the award again for City on Fire in 1987 and a third time for All About Ah Long in 1990, becoming the first three-time winner. His other hits include Prison on Fire (1987), God of Gamblers (1989), God of Gamblers II (1990), The Killer (1989), Hard Boiled (1992) and Once a Thief (1991), and he has twice won the Golden Horse Award for Best Actor, for Waiting for Dawn (1984) and An Autumn's Tale (1987); he also appeared in such romantic dramas as Love in a Fallen City (1984) and Women (1985). After starring in Peace Hotel in 1995 he moved to Hollywood, appearing in The Replacement Killers (1998), The Corruptor (1998) and Anna and the King (1999). In 2000 he starred in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as the swordsman Li Mu-bai, and the film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He later appeared in Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), The Postmodern Life of My Aunt (2006), Confucius (2010), Let the Bullets Fly (2010), The Founding of a Party (2011), The Monkey King (2014) and Project Gutenberg (2018). A keen photographer who has held exhibitions of his street and black-and-white work, he has said he intends to donate much of his fortune to charity. He married the actress Candice Yu in 1983, divorced the following year, and remarried Jasmine Tan in 1986. In 2023 he received the Asian Filmmaker of the Year award at the Busan International Film Festival and starred in Be My Guest.
The Mark character Chow Yun-fat created in A Better Tomorrow redefined the hero of 1980s Hong Kong triad cinema and fuelled a wave of similar films. By winning the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor three times, for A Better Tomorrow, City on Fire and All About Ah Long, he became the first three-time winner in the award's history. His Hui Man-keung in the television drama The Bund became a household name across the Chinese-speaking world, lifting the reach of television stardom to new heights. He later moved into Hollywood and starred in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, extending the international profile of Hong Kong actors and opening a path abroad for later generations.
Achievements
- 1986 · Won his first Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor for A Better Tomorrow
- 1990 · Won a third Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor for All About Ah Long
- 2000 · Starred in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon