Ankie Lau Heung-ping was born in Hong Kong in 1958 and is a former actress and film producer, the mother of the model and actress Ankie Beilke. She grew up in Fuk Wah Village in Ngau Tau Kok, where her family ran a rattan business, and attended a number of schools, becoming president of seven student societies during her studies. In 1974 she joined Shaw Brothers' final acting course, in the same intake as Simon Yam; after leaving school in 1976 she taught physical education at a secondary school in Kowloon City, where her students included Ho Ka-king and Cecilia Yip. That same year she entered Rediffusion Television's second acting course, alongside Man Tsz-leung and Lau Ying-hung, and went straight into dramas such as Lang Tao Sha, The TV People, Tai Cheung Fu and Siu Lui Yan, coming to prominence with Lang Tao Sha. In 1978 she moved to Television Broadcasts and appeared in serials including The Network People and A Puzzling Case. In the early 1980s she set aside her acting career to study at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf, married there and gave birth to her daughter, appearing in more than forty local productions. In 1988 she founded her own multimedia film company, distributing a number of features, and from 1993 she served as an official representative of the Shanghai International Film Festival, also attending the Berlin and Cannes festivals and promoting film and television exchange between China and Germany. She wears many hats — actress, screenwriter, director, producer and international festival adviser — in a career spanning mainland China, Germany and the United States of more than fifty years. Rising to fame in Hong Kong through television dramas before moving behind the camera, she became one of the few Chinese producers to gain a footing in mainstream European screen media, dividing her life between Germany and Hong Kong and working on production and distribution between the two.
Moving from television actress to producer and distributor, Lau founded her own company in 1988 and long worked between Germany and Hong Kong on co-productions and distribution, repeatedly representing the Shanghai International Film Festival in its contacts with European festivals — an early participant in Chinese-language screen media's move onto the international stage.
Achievements
- 1974 · Joined Shaw Brothers' final acting course in 1974, in the same intake as Simon Yam
- 1976 · Joined Rediffusion Television in 1976, coming to prominence with the serial Lang Tao Sha
- 1988 · Founded her own multimedia film company in 1988, distributing a number of features