Sammo Hung: from being Jackie Chan’s boss to honing Michelle Yeoh’s talent, 8 little-known facts about the Hong Kong martial arts star

Sammo Hung has been a force in Hong Kong cinema for decades as an actor, producer and martial artist. But how much do you know about him and his career?

Hung was a full-time stuntman by the time he was 16, having largely taught himself kung fu, before moving into acting – from which he later walked away

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Sammo Hung Kam-bo at an interview with the Post in 1989. By then he had already enjoyed a prolific career as a stuntman, actor, choreographer and producer. Photo: SCMP

Published: 4:15am, 5 Nov 2023Updated: 10:25am, 19 Nov 2023

Sammo Hung Kam-bo has been a powerful force in Hong Kong cinema since the 1960s. You may think you know all there is to know about the prolific actor, producer and martial artist, but here are a few lesser-known facts about Hung.

1. Hung came from a moviemaking family – is that why he went into films?

According to an interview that Hung gave to the Hong Kong Film Archive, his maternal grandfather used to build film sets in Hong Kong, and his paternal grandfather Hung Chun-ho was a big producer who once had his own studio in Kowloon, but lost it gambling on the horses.

Hung’s grandmother Chin Tsi-ang was well-known as the martial arts genre’s first action heroine, and had a prolific career that spanned from the 1920s to the early 2000s – she can be seen in Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, aged 92.

Hung’s parents both worked in film wardrobe departments.

Hung lived with his grandparents, but has said that their involvement in the movie industry had no influence on his later film career.