Maggie Cheung Man-yuk
Actress

Maggie Cheung was born in Hong Kong on September 20, 1964. She has already appeared in seventy-five films, and has won more awards for her work than any other Hong Kong actress.

Among these honors are four Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Actress, four Golden Horse Awards (Taiwan's equivalent of the Academy Awards), the Golden Bauhinia (Hong Kong's equivalent of the Golden Globe), and awards from the Chicago and Turin Film Festivals.

She lived in Great Britain with her family from the ages of 8 to 17. When she returned to her hometown, she took part in the Miss Hong Kong contest, in which she placed second and was voted Miss Photogenic. She then worked for the television channel TVB, appearing in several successful series.

The worldwide triumph of one of her earliest feature films, Jackie Chan's Police Story (1985), kick-started her film career. During one year, Maggie starred in a dozen films in addition to working on television series. She describes this period of her life as very "enriching" professionally.

When she met Wong Kar-wai, he offered her the lead role in his feature directorial debut, As Tears Go By (1988). With the release of that film, the critical acclaim for her performance expanded her status in the industry overnight: she became the muse of Hong Kong "auteur" films. She appeared alongside Ann Hui Oh-wah in the latter's beautiful and autobiographical Song of the Exile (1990). For her performance as the legendary Chinese movie star Ruan Lingyu in Stanely Kwan Kam-pang's Actress (Centre Stage), Maggie received the Best Actress award at the 1992 Berlin Film Festival - becoming the first Chinese actress to earn that honor.

Her other notable films include Tsui Hark's Green Snake (1993); Peter Chan's Comrades, Almost A Love Story (1996); and for Wong Kar-wai, Days of Being Wild (1991), Ashes of Time (1994), and In the Mood for Love.

More recently, Maggie became well-known in France when she played herself in Olivier Assay's Irma Vep (1996) and then starred in a French comedy, Anne Fontaine's Augustin, King of Kung Fu [Augustin, roi de kung-fu] (1999).

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Related:
AC Interviews Maggie Cheung Man-yuk (In the Mood for Love)