Chow Yun-fat (born 18 May 1955), previously known as Donald Chow, is a Hong Kong actor.
He is perhaps best known for his collaborations with filmmaker John Woo in five Hong Kong action films: A Better Tomorrow (1986), A Better Tomorrow II (1987), The Killer (1989), Once a Thief (1991) and Hard Boiled (1992), and in the West for his roles as King Mongkut in Anna and the King (1999), Li Mu-bai in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Sao Feng in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007).
He mainly plays in drama films and has won three Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Actor and two Golden Horse Awards for Best Actor in Taiwan. Chow started his career in movies in 1976 with Goldig Films, the third largest film company at the time.
Early life and education
Chow was born in Lamma Island, Hong Kong, to Chow Yung-wan (), who worked on a Shell Oil Company tanker, and Chan Lai-fong (), who was a cleaning lady and vegetable farmer. Chow grew up in a farming community on Lamma Island, in a house with no electricity. He woke up at dawn each morning to help his mother sell herbal jelly and Hakka tea-pudding (客家茶粿) on the streets; in the afternoons, he went to work in the fields. His family moved to Kowloon when he was ten.
At 17, Chow left school to help support the family by doing odd jobs including a bellboy, postman, camera salesman, and taxi driver.
Chow's life started to change after college when he responded to a newspaper advertisement, and his actor-trainee application was accepted by TVB, the local television station. He signed a three-year contract with the studio and made his acting debut. Chow became a heartthrob and familiar face in soap operas that were exported internationally. According to his filmography, Chow made his debut in 1976 in various movies produced by Goldig Films, including Hot Blood (入冊). Goldig Films was founded and self-funded by Gouw Hiap Kian, who was its chairman and managing director and employed other individuals as movie directors. It produced and distributed over 100 movies from 1972 to 1982. Goldig also invested in properties, including a cinema, and financial investments with substantial assets since the 1990s. Chow was identified by Goldig to be an actor before he applied to TVB as a trainee.
Career
Chow's first film contract was an exclusive acting contract with Goldig Films. Chow appeared in the 1980 TV series The Bund on TVB. The series, about the rise and fall of a gangster in 1930s Shanghai, was a hit throughout Asia and made Chow a star.
Although Chow continued his TV success, his goal was to become a film actor. However, his occasional ventures into low-budget films in the 1980s after ones by Goldig were disastrous. Most of Chow's movies produced by Goldig Films under exclusive contract in the 1970s achieved high gross revenues of over HK$1million per movie. These figures are higher than ones Chow acted in the early 1980s, including Modern Heroes (江湖檔案), Soul Ash (灰靈), The Bund (上海灘), The Bund Part 2 (上海灘續集). Note gross revenues under list of movies 周润发.
Success finally came when he teamed up with film director John Woo in the 1986 gangster action-melodrama A Better Tomorrow, which swept the box offices in Asia and established Chow and Woo as megastars. A Better Tomorrow won him his first Best Actor award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. It was the highest-grossing film in Hong Kong history at the time, and set a new standard for Hong Kong gangster films. Taking the opportunity, Chow quit TV entirely. With his new image from A Better Tomorrow, he made many more 'gun fu' or 'heroic bloodshed' films, such as A Better Tomorrow II (1987), Prison on Fire (1987), Prison on Fire II (1991), The Killer (1989), A Better Tomorrow 3 (1990), Hard Boiled (1992) and City on Fire (1987), an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.
Chow may be best known for playing honorable tough guys, whether cops or criminals, but he has also starred in comedies like Diary of a Big Man (1988) and Now You See Love, Now You Don't (1992) and romantic blockbusters such as Love in a Fallen City (1984) and An Autumn's Tale (1987), for which he was named Best Actor at the Golden Horse Awards. He brought together his disparate personae in the 1989 film God of Gamblers, directed by the prolific Wong Jing, in which he was by turns a suave charmer, a broad comedian, and an action hero. The film surprised many, became immensely popular, broke Hong Kong's all-time box office record, and spawned a series of gambling films as well as several comic sequels starring Andy Lau and Stephen Chow. The often tough demeanour and youthful appearance of Chow's characters has earned him the nickname "Babyface Killer".