Lee Lik-chi (born 10 May 1961), nicknamed Daai Lik, is a Hong Kong film director, screenwriter and actor whose family came from Shipai in Dongguan, Guangdong; he grew up in the Valley Road Estate in To Kwa Wan. He finished primary school in Ho Man Tin, graduated from New Asia Middle School in 1978 in its first cohort, and completed his pre-university year there in 1979 with top grades in Chinese and mathematics. After working as a storekeeper he joined Asia Television in 1982 as an assistant director before moving to Television Broadcasts as a director. At TVB he directed two popular series with Stephen Chow, The Final Combat and The Justice of Life (both 1989), whose success drew film offers. He and Chow then made a run of hits together, among them The Magnificent Scoundrels (1991), Flirting Scholar (1993), Love on Delivery (1994), From Beijing with Love (1994), God of Cookery (1996) and King of Comedy (1999); in between he directed Ten Brothers (1995) and The Lucky Guy (1998) on his own. In 2001 he served as executive director on Chow's Shaolin Soccer, after which the two stopped collaborating. He later moved to the mainland, where he runs comedy filmmaking courses teaching comic direction and performance and has developed his own training method.
Lee Lik-chi's comedies with Stephen Chow, among them Flirting Scholar, God of Cookery and King of Comedy, defined the mo-lei-tau style and box office of 1990s Hong Kong cinema; in recent years he has run comedy training courses that pass on his screen experience to a new generation.
Achievements
- 1982 · Joined Asia Television as an assistant director and later moved to Television Broadcasts as a director.
- 1989 · His TVB series with Stephen Chow, The Final Combat and The Justice of Life, were broadcast.
- 1999 · Directed King of Comedy.