Li Li-hua was born in Shanghai in 1924 to a family from Hebei, the daughter of the Peking-opera actors Li Guifang and Zhang Shaoquan. She began training under the opera star Zhang E-yun at twelve, and at sixteen was spotted by Yan Chuntang of Shanghai's Yihua Film Company; her first picture, Three Laughs (1940), was a box-office hit that made her a star, followed by films such as Seeing Off Jing Niang (1940) and Waterloo Bridge (1941). Remaining in Shanghai during the war, she worked for the China United Film Company on pictures including Universal Love and Pleasures of the Moon (both 1942) and A Thousand Reds and Purples (1943); after the war she was briefly accused of collaboration but was cleared and returned to the screen in Huang Zuolin's directorial debut The False Phoenix and the Fake Phoenix (1947). In 1948, at the invitation of Yonghua's founder Li Zuyong, she moved south to Hong Kong, appearing in Spring Thunder and The Sea Vow (both 1949) and going on to work for Great Wall, Longma, Hsin Hwa, Shaw and Cathay in films such as The World of Lies (1950), Little Fengxian (1953), Red Begonia (1955) and Madame Butterfly (1956). In the 1960s she joined Shaw Brothers, starring in Yang Kwei Fei (1962) and Empress Wu (1963). She founded Lihua Film Company in 1954, producing films including A Sudden Success (1954) and The Great Wall (1957), and in 1958 took the female lead in the American picture China Doll. She married the actor-director Yan Jun in 1959 and retired from the screen in 1973, though she returned for King Hu's The Fate of Lee Khan (1973), making her farewell in The New Dream of the Red Chamber (1978). Between 1940 and 1978 she starred in nearly 120 films across Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan, winning the Golden Horse Best Actress award twice, for Between Tears and Smiles (1964) and Storm over the Yangtze River (1969). Known as the 'evergreen' of Chinese cinema, she received lifetime achievement honours at the Golden Horse Awards in 2015 and the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2016. She died in Hong Kong on 19 March 2017.
Starring in nearly 120 films across Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Li Li-hua brought an opera-trained discipline to screen acting and handled everything from imperial costume drama to modern romance, earning the name 'evergreen of Chinese cinema'. A two-time Golden Horse Best Actress, she later received lifetime achievement honours from both the Golden Horse Awards and the Hong Kong Film Awards, spanning four decades of Chinese-language cinema.
Achievements
- 1940 · Starred in her first film, Three Laughs, which made her a star.
- 1964 · Won the Golden Horse Best Actress award for Between Tears and Smiles.
- 2016 · Received the Hong Kong Film Awards Lifetime Achievement Award.