Chow Yun-fat

Chow Yun-fat, previously known as Donald Chow, is a Hong Kong actor and filmmaker born on May 18, 1955. Across a screen career spanning more than forty-five years, he has appeared in over 100 feature films and television drama series. Recognized for his performance range across action, melodrama, comedy, and historical drama, Chow has won three Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Actor as well as two Golden Horse Awards for Best Actor.

Chow spent his early childhood on Lamma Island, Hong Kong, where his father worked on a Shell Oil Company tanker and his mother worked as a cleaner and vegetable farmer. Raised in a rural farming community without electricity, Chow helped his mother sell street food in the mornings before working in the fields. His family moved to Kowloon when he was ten years old. At age 17, Chow left school to help support his household by taking on jobs as a bellboy, postman, camera salesman, and taxi driver.

In 1973, Chow entered a one-year actor training program at the television station TVB. After graduating, he signed a three-year contract, making his acting debut in soap operas and earning attention in television dramas such as The Killer and Hotel in 1976. He achieved major popularity across Asia through leading roles in the hit series The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1979) and The Bund (1980). Chow also transitioned into cinema in 1976 under an exclusive contract with Goldig Films. Following his exit from Goldig, a series of lower-budget ventures in the early 1980s temporarily led to him being labeled box office poison.

Chow's film standing changed significantly when he teamed with director John Woo for the 1986 action film A Better Tomorrow. The movie achieved tremendous commercial success across Asia, securing Chow his first Best Actor trophy at the Hong Kong Film Awards. He subsequently collaborated with Woo on a succession of influential action titles, including A Better Tomorrow II, The Killer, Once a Thief, and Hard Boiled. Chow also starred in notable crime thrillers directed by Ringo Lam, such as City on Fire and Prison on Fire, which contributed to bringing Hong Kong gangster cinema to wider international attention.

Beyond his action roles, Chow proved his versatility in romantic dramas like An Autumn's Tale, comedies such as Diary of a Big Man, and Wong Jing's popular 1989 feature God of Gamblers. In the late 1990s, Chow moved to Hollywood, making his American film debut in The Replacement Killers (1998) and later starring in Anna and the King (1999). He gained substantial international recognition as Li Mu-bai in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), which earned him Best Actor nominations at the Saturn Awards and Hong Kong Film Awards. His Western projects also included Bulletproof Monk and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

Chow continued to work prominently in Asian cinema, appearing in Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), Let the Bullets Fly (2010), the From Vegas to Macau series, and Project Gutenberg (2018). In 2023, he received the Asian Filmmaker of the Year award at the Busan International Film Awards. In his personal life, Chow married actress Candice Yu in 1983, a marriage that ended after nine months, and later married Jasmine Tan in 1986. Known for maintaining a modest public lifestyle, Chow frequently uses public transit in Hong Kong and has pledged to leave his wealth to charity.