Sandra Ng, born in Hong Kong on 2 August 1965 with ancestral roots in Panyu, Guangdong, is an actress, director, producer and singer, one of the most influential female comedians in the Chinese-speaking world and the highest-grossing actress in Hong Kong film history, with cumulative box office of around HK$700 million and more than a hundred films to her name. In 1999 she won best actress at the 18th Hong Kong Film Awards, the Golden Bauhinia Awards and the Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards for her role in a Young and Dangerous spin-off, and in 2003 she took best actress at the 40th Golden Horse Awards for Golden Chicken. Her father was the Cantonese cinema actor Ha Chun-chau, long-time host of a televised lottery draw, and her partner is the director Peter Chan; they have a daughter. She grew up in Central and North Point and attended a girls' school there, disliking study and doing poorly in the school certificate examination. After finishing Form Five at seventeen in 1982, she joined the twelfth actor training class of Television Broadcasts through her father's contacts, in the same cohort as Margie Tsang, Carina Lau, Lawrence Ng and Lau Ching-wan, signed with the station in 1983 and initially played minor roles before being moved to the long-running variety show Enjoy Yourself Tonight, where a colleague's departure gave her her break; she went on to appear in comedies opposite Stephen Chow. From the late 1980s she moved into film, excelling in comic roles in the God of Gamblers and Inspector Wears Skirts series and family comedies, later changing gear with a self-financed drama. In 2010 she played a bisexual woman in Ann Hui's All About Love, winning best actress at the Asian Film Festival of Rome, and a humble housewife in Echoes of the Rainbow. In 2017 she made her directorial debut with Goldbuster, and she has also produced films such as Golden Chicken S (2014).
Sandra Ng rose from a television comic to a best-actress winner, using self-deprecating humour to break the mould of female performers and later proving her dramatic depth in the Young and Dangerous spin-off and Golden Chicken; she is the highest-grossing actress in Hong Kong and has extended into directing and producing, an emblem of female comedy in Chinese-language cinema.
Achievements
- 1988 · Starred in the Inspector Wears Skirts series, cementing her comic image
- 1999 · Won best actress at the 18th Hong Kong Film Awards for her role in the Young and Dangerous spin-off
- 2003 · Won best actress at the 40th Golden Horse Awards for Golden Chicken