Kelly Lai Chen (3 September 1933 – 3 April 2018), born Xi Chongjian, was a Hong Kong actor known as the 'melancholy idol'. Of Pudong ancestry and born in Shanghai, he lost his father at four and his mother at fourteen and was raised by his grandmother, with whom he moved to Hong Kong in 1949; he briefly attended the Far East Aviation School and once sat the air force academy examination with his elder brother, training in Taiwan for half a year before being discharged because a hereditary heart condition failed the medical. At the end of 1955 he passed the entrance examination of International Film Distribution, the predecessor of the studio MP & GI, and took the stage name Lai Chen, making his screen debut in 1956 in Song of the Green Mountain Valley. He starred in films such as The Golden Lotus (1957) and The Little Lover (1958) and became known for a refined, scholarly screen persona. Appearing in more than forty films in the 1950s and 1960s, his Mandarin pictures for the company included The Four Daughters, Our Children, All in the Family, Deep as the Sea and Little Children. In 1968 he founded the Golden Eagle Film Company with his sister Betty Loh Ti and the director Yuen Chau-fung, producing seven martial-arts films including The Dusty Traveller (1968). From 1971 he worked behind the scenes, running his joint film-processing firm for twenty-one years, and occasionally took cameo roles, among them Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (2000). He died in Hong Kong on 3 April 2018.
Kelly Lai Chen was one of the leading young leads of MP & GI in the 1950s and 1960s, leaving films such as The Golden Lotus and The Little Lover during the golden age of Mandarin cinema. He later moved into film processing and founded the Golden Eagle company, living through the shift of Hong Kong cinema from the Mandarin heyday towards local production.
Achievements
- 1956 · Made his screen debut in Song of the Green Mountain Valley.
- 1968 · Co-founded the Golden Eagle Film Company with his sister Betty Loh Ti and the director Yuen Chau-fung.
- 2000 · Appeared in a cameo in Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love.