Alfred Cheung Kin-ting, born in Guangzhou on 28 December 1956 and with his family roots in Kaiping, came to Hong Kong at three with his schoolteacher mother, while his father stayed behind to care for a blind grandmother; his name, chosen by his mother, means a sturdy family. Settling in Tsim Sha Tsui, he attended Fatima English School, Pok Wan English College and Wellington English College, finishing Form Five in 1973, and graduated in Chinese language and literature from Hong Kong Baptist College. Before graduating a classmate introduced him to Radio Television Hong Kong as a part-time scriptwriter; he started as a writer and, spotted by the television director King Hoi-lam, moved from announcer to assistant director. He wrote his first script, a Below the Lion Rock episode, in 1978 and another a year later, then took a film diploma course at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and went to the New School for Social Research in the United States to study the films of Hitchcock. He began writing for films in 1981, won a most-recommended-screenplay honour at the first Hong Kong Film Awards in 1982 for The Story of Woo Viet, and in 1983 wrote and directed the hit comedy Let's Make Laugh, taking best screenplay at the third Hong Kong Film Awards. He has worked on more than eighty films, mostly comedies, as director, writer, producer and actor, and in 1990 wrote, directed and starred in Her Fatal Ways, whose culture-clash tale of a mainland policewoman in Hong Kong captured the mood around 1997 and won its lead, Carol Cheng, the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actress. From the late 1990s he moved into other media and business, founding a drama-training practice in 2003 and completing an executive MBA at HKUST in 2008. He married Yeung Nok-sze, daughter of Albert Yeung, in 1993, and has three children. He now lives in Britain.
Through comedies such as Let's Make Laugh and Her Fatal Ways, Alfred Cheung put the cultural collisions between Hong Kong and the mainland, and the collective anxiety around 1997, on the screen, combining a screenwriter's precision with a performer's streetwise humour; he was a leading figure in Hong Kong comedy of the 1980s and 1990s, and his mainland policewoman 'Cousin' became a classic image of the mainlander in local cinema.
Achievements
- 1982 · Won a most-recommended-screenplay honour at the first Hong Kong Film Awards for The Story of Woo Viet
- 1984 · Won best screenplay at the third Hong Kong Film Awards for Let's Make Laugh
- 1990 · Wrote, directed and starred in Her Fatal Ways, which won Carol Cheng the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actress