Chow Yun-Fat

(Redirected from Chow Yun Fat)

This is a Chinese name; the family name is Chow

Chow Yun-Fat (Traditional Chinese: 周潤發; Simplified Chinese: 周润发; pinyin: Zhōu Rùnfā) (born May 18, 1955 on Lamma Island, Hong Kong) is a Hong Kong actor.

He is among a handful of internationally recognized screen actors that Hong Kong has produced, along with Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Michelle Yeoh. However, unlike many of his contemporaries, Chow is not a martial artist. A tall (6"1 / 1.85 m), good-looking charismatic actor, he won Hong kong's "best actor" award three times and Taiwan's two times. He has been likened to a grittier, more intense version of Cary Grant, and the Chinese version of Alain Delon.

Early life

A Hakka raised on the tiny offshore island of Lamma, Chow spent his childhood in poverty. His life started to change when his actor-trainee application was accepted by the local television station, TVB.

Career

It did not take long for Chow to become a household name in Hong Kong following his role in the hit series The Bund in 1983.

Although Chow continued his TV success, his ultimate goal was to become a big screen actor. However, his occasional ventures onto the big screens with low-budget movies were disastrous. Success finally came when he teamed up with a then relatively unknown director John Woo in the 1986 gangster action-melodrama A Better Tomorrow, which swept the box offices in parts of Asia and established both Chow and Woo as megastars. Taking the opportunity, Chow quit TV entirely. With his new image from A Better Tomorrow, he made many more 'gun fu' or 'heroic bloodshed' movies, especially those directed by Woo, such as The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled (1992).

Chow may be best known, especially in the West, for playing honourable tough guys, whether cops or criminals, but he is a versatile performer. He has starred in comedies like Diary of a Big Man (1988) and Now You See Love... Now You Don't (1992) or romantic films such as Love in a Fallen City (1984) and An Autumn's Tale (1987). He brought together his disparate personas in the 1989 film God of Gamblers (Du Shen), directed by the prolific Wong Jing, in which he was by turns suave charmer, broad comedian and action hero. The film surprised many and turned out immensely popular, broke Hong Kong's all-time box office record, and spawned a series of gambling movies, as well as several more comic sequels starring Andy Lau and Stephen Chow.

Being one of the hottest screen commodities in Hong Kong, Chow moved to Hollywood in the mid-'90s in an attempt to duplicate his success on an international scale. His first two films Replacement Killers (1998) and The Corruptor (1999) were box-office disappointments. His next film Anna and the King (1999) did better, but the success was mostly credited to actress Jodie Foster. He returned to Asia for the (2000) film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and it became a winner at both the international box office and the Oscars. In 2004, he made a surprise cameo in the mainland Chinese indie-hit Waiting Alone. In 2006, he teamed up with Gong Li to star in the new film by Zhang Yimou.

Chow is still waiting for the type of success he once enjoyed in Hong Kong. He once admitted to a Hong Kong reporter that his ultimate goal is to win an Oscar as an actor. When asked what if it never comes true, he replied "I would just have to laugh about it..."

He is set to play the demonic pirate, captain Sao Feng in the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Private life

Chow Yun-Fat has married twice. First to Candice Yu (chinese: 余安安) in 1983, who was an actress from Asian Television Ltd, TVB's rival. But the marriage did not last long and the two broke up after about a year.

Chow has since married Singaporean Jasmine Tan (chinese: 陳萫蓮) in 1986. Tan reportedly had a miscarriage during pregnancy and the two have no children.

Filmography

• Reincarnation (1977)
• Heroic Cops (1977)
• Hot Blood (1977)
• Police Sir! (1980)
• Postman Fight Back (1981)
• The Story of Woo Viet (1981)
• Head Hunter aka Long Goodbye (1982)
• Last Affair (1983)
• Bloody Money (1983)
• Love in a Fallen City (1984)
• Hong Kong 1941 (1984)
• The Occupant (1984))
• Women (1985)
• Witch from Nepal (1985)
• Spiritual Love (1985)
• Why Me? (1985)
• Love Unto Waste (1986)
• A Better Tomorrow (1986)
• Seventh Curse (1986)
• Rose (1986)
• Lunatics (1986)
• 100 Ways to Murder Your Wife (1986)
• Hearty Response (1986)
• City on Fire (1987)
• Scared Stiff (1987)
• An Autumn's Tale (1987)
• Tragic Hero (1987)
• Code of Honor (1987)
• Prison on Fire (1987)
• My Will, I Will (1987)
• Rich And Famous (1987)
• City War (1989)
• A Better Tomorrow II (1987)
• Romancing Star (1987)
• The Eighth Happiness (1988)
• Fractured Follies (1988)
• Tiger on Beat (1988)
• Greatest Lover (1988)
• Cherry Blossoms (1988)
• Diary of a Big Man (1988)
• All About Ah-Long (1989)
• The Fun, the Luck & the Tycoon (1989)
• The Killer (1989)
• A Better Tomorrow III (1989)
• God of Gamblers (1989)
• (1989)
• Wild Search (1990)
• Once a Thief (1991)
• Prison on Fire II (1991)
• Hard Boiled (1992)
• Full Contact (1992)
• God of Gamblers Returns (1994)
• Treasure Hunt (1994)
• Peace Hotel (1995)
• The Replacement Killers (1998)
• The Corruptor (1999)
• Anna and the King (1999)
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
• Bulletproof Monk (2003)
• Waiting Alone (2004)
• The Aunt's Postmodern Life (2006)
• Stranglehold (video game) (2006)
• Curse of the Golden Flower (2007)
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (2007)
• The Battle of Red Cliff (2008)

Selected TV Series

• The Bund (1983) 25 episodes - a classic Shanghai godfather series [1]

• The Smiling, Proud Wanderer (1984) - Chow Yun Fat's first and only foray in wuxia TV series.

See also

• Cinema of China
• Cinema of Hong Kong
• Chow Yun-Fat of Hong Kong Fan Site

External links

• Chow Yun-Fat at the Internet Movie Database

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