What makes Hong Kong’s Chow Yun-fat ‘the coolest actor in the world’? At 65, the Pirates of the Caribbean star is still up for action – and romance
The actor, who is 65 on May 18, rose to box-office prominence in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow before appearing in Hollywood films like The Replacement Killers; despite his many action roles, his favourite films he has worked on are romances, like An Autumn’s Tale
As he celebrates his 65th birthday, it’s undeniable that Chow Yun-fat is one of Hong Kong cinema’s greatest icons – standing tall alongside the likes of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li. The Los Angeles Times described him as “the coolest actor in the world” in the 90s and Gore Verbinski described Chow as a “living legend” when the actor signed on for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.
In contrast to the wealth and fame he would acquire, Chow comes from a modest background. While his father worked on oil tankers, his mother was a cleaning lady and a farmer and Chow grew up helping her sell Hakka tea-pudding and herbal jelly on the streets of Lamma Island where he was born.
Chow, who celebrates the milestone birthday on May 18, dropped out of school at 17 to earn a living and help support his family. Within a year, he caught a break when he was accepted into TVB’s actor training course in 1973. Three years later Chow was one of the principal characters in TVB’s hugely popular drama Hotel , which was about the struggles of the middle class that ran for more than 100 episodes and attracted millions of viewers.
Although he was a popular TV star, for many years Chow could not translate that into popularity at the box office – many of his early films are forgotten. Eventually things started to change, first with Hong Kong 1941 for which he won best actor at the Golden Horse Awards. But it wasn’t until his star turn as honourable gangster Mark in A Better Tomorrow (1986) that Chow proved he was a draw.
The film’s director, John Woo, recollected, “At that time Chow was already a huge TV star in Hong Kong. But he’d never made a successful film. Some people even called him “box office poison”, even though people recognised him as a great actor.”
Chow’s super cool demeanour and skill with twin handguns helped make his character one of the icons of Hong Kong cinema. The actor himself says it was a “coincidence” that he landed the role of Mark at all, what with studios and cinema owners keen on the role going to a more bankable star.
With A Better Tomorrow’s box office success there were no complaints about bringing Chow back for the sequels – despite his character dying at the end of the first film. In a typical piece of Hong Kong schlock, it is revealed in A Better Tomorrow II that Mark has an identical twin brother, Ken, conveniently enabling Chow to return and pick up guns again.
However, Chow admitted he was not exactly happy to play Mark or Ken in these sequels. In the 90s, with the A Better Tomorrow trilogy complete, he admitted, “I hated to play [Mark] again … I didn’t want to do the role again … I don’t like part two and part three.”
Despite his reservations, A Better Tomorrow was the start of a fruitful relationship between Chow and Woo. The pair worked on a number of the most famous Hong Kong films of the era, including The Killer and Hard Boiled.
These bullet-riddled films helped make Chow an action hero around the world. Chow has been effusive in his praise for Woo, describing him as “the special one” and crediting the director with helping him become a star. He has even said that one of his dreams is to make a movie with John Woo in Hollywood.