Tony Leung

Tony Leung Chiu-wai (, born 27 June 1962) is a Hong Kong actor and singer. He is one of Asia's most successful and internationally recognized actors. He has won many international acting prizes, including the Cannes Film Festival award for Best Actor. He was named by CNN as one of "Asia's 25 Greatest Actors of All Time".

Leung is known for his collaborations with director Wong Kar-wai, with whom he has worked in seven films, including Chungking Express (1994), Happy Together (1997), In the Mood for Love (2000), 2046 (2004), and The Grandmaster (2013). He also appeared in three Venice Film Festival Golden Lion-winning films: A City of Sadness (1989), Cyclo (1995) and Lust, Caution (2007), directed by Ang Lee. Leung also starred in the Academy Award-nominated film Hero (2002), the cult classic Hard Boiled (1992), and box office hits Infernal Affairs (2002) and Red Cliff (2008). He later gained wider recognition in Hollywood with his role in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021).

Leung has an extensive list of awards that he has won in a career that began in the 1980s. For In the Mood for Love, Leung earned the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. The 2002 book East Asian Film Stars describes Leung as "undoubtedly one of the most successful and widely-acclaimed Hong Kong actors of his generation, with a broad and diverse filmography." In 2023, he became the first male actor to win the "Grand Slam", after winning Best Actor at the three most prestigious Chinese-language film awards: the Golden Horse Awards, the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Rooster Awards.

Early life Leung was born in Hong Kong during British colonial rule to a family of Taishan, Guangdong ancestry. His early childhood was punctuated by his parents' quarrels and arguments about money. A mischievous boy in his early years, Leung changed after his father, a chronic gambler, left the family when he was eight; he and his younger sister were brought up by their mother.

Leung was a slightly reticent, quiet child. He has said that his childhood experiences paved the way for his acting career, which allows him to openly express his feelings:You don't know what happened, just one day your pop disappears. And from that day on I try not to communicate with anyone. I'm so afraid to talk to my classmates, afraid that if someone says something about family I won't know what to do. So I became very isolated. So that's why I love acting, because I can express all my feelings the way I couldn't for so long. I'm a quiet person. And then when I went to TV it all came out; I cried and I wasn't ashamed. The audience thinks it's the character's feelings, but really it's my feelings, all coming out in a rush. Leung went to Delia Memorial School, but quit in 1977 at the age of 15 due to financial difficulties so he didn't finished any school or college. He was very close to his mother. During an interview on the making of Hero, he said that he saw his mother as his definition of a hero for having brought up two children alone.

Television career

After quitting his studies, Leung worked in a variety of jobs, first as a grocer's runner at his uncle's shop, then a home appliance salesman in a Hong Kong shopping centre. Around the age of 16, he met future actor and comedian Stephen Chow, who influenced his decision to become an actor and remains a good friend.

In 1982, he graduated from television channel TVB's acting class. Due to his boyish looks, TVB initially cast him as the host of a children's programme, 430 Space Shuttle, but soon moved him to drama roles, beginning with Soldier of Fortune (1982). He was quickly promoted to leading man status in primetime series, including The Duke of Mount Deer (1984) and New Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre (1986). Leung mostly enjoyed comedies during his television years; it was for these he became well known. In the 1980s, he was named one of "TVB's Five Tigers" (their five popular young leading actors), along with Andy Lau, Felix Wong, Michael Miu and Kent Tong.

Leung starred in the popular Police Cadet TV serial in 1984 (later named Police Cadet 84 to distinguish it from its two sequels). The series had an average viewership rating of 50% per episode during its original run. Leung played an outgoing young man who decides to become a police officer; Maggie Cheung, whose career started at the same time, played Leung's upstairs neighbour and love interest. Since then they have worked together on The Yang's Saga (1985), Days of Being Wild (1991), The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993), Ashes of Time (1994), In the Mood for Love (2000), Hero (2002), and 2046 (2005). Leung has said that he considers Cheung his alter ego, and that "Maggie is a truly formidable partner—one to waltz with. We do not spend a lot of time with each other, as we like to keep some mystery between us. Whenever I see her, I discover something new about her".

After eight years with TVB, Leung left the network to focus on his film career. His final TV drama was Ode to Gallantry in 1989.

Film career

Many consider Leung to be the most acclaimed contemporary actor in Greater China. He first garnered international attention in Hou Hsiao-hsien's 1989 film A City of Sadness, which won the Venice Golden Lion. Before that he was already known in Hong Kong for his TV shows and films in the mid-1980s.

Leung's initial transition from television to film in the late '80s and early '90s is considered a low period in his career. He had won two HKFA Best Supporting Actor awards in quick succession but was struggling to establish himself as a leading man on the big screen. Leung has also said that until Days of Being Wild (1990), he had lost interest in acting and considered quitting, but working with Wong Kar-wai and seeing his scene in the final film changed his mind. His career entered a new chapter when he won dual Best Actor awards at the Golden Horse Awards and Hong Kong Film Awards for Chungking Express (1994), becoming only the second actor to do so after Danny Lee in 1984. He repeated the feat with Infernal Affairs in 2003. Beginning with Chungking Express, Leung has picked up six Best Actor wins at the Hong Kong Film Awards, three Best Actor awards at the Golden Horse Awards, as well as a Best Actor prize at Cannes.

Leung often collaborates with Wong Kar-wai and has appeared in many of his films. His roles include the lonely policeman in Chungking Express (1994), a gay Chinese expatriate living in Argentina in Happy Together (1997), and a self-controlled victim of adultery in In the Mood for Love (2000), for which he won the Best Actor award at Cannes. He reprised his role from In the Mood for Love as a new Chow Mo-wan in 2046 (2004) and trained in Wing Chun for five years to prepare for his role as Ip Man in Wong's The Grandmaster. Wong's Jet Tone Film Production was also Leung's management agency for many years until 2018.

In addition to his works with Wong, Leung has starred in three Venice Golden Lion winning films: A City of Sadness (1989), Cyclo (1995) and Lust, Caution (2007), cementing his reputation in the arthouse cinema world. He also became the first Chinese actor to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival. In 2014, he was a member of the jury of the 64th Berlin International Film Festival, and in 2017 he was invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 2022, Leung was named the Asian Filmmaker of the Year at the 27th Busan International Film Festival. Robert De Niro and Brad Pitt are admirers of his work, and The Times has called Leung Asia's answer to Clark Gable. He has also been compared to Cary Grant, or a combination of several A-list Hollywood stars.

Leung is widely believed to be a method actor. He has said that he often has trouble separating the characters from himself, beginning with his early TV roles. He usually takes long breaks after filming to recover from psychologically taxing roles, and remnants of the characters still remain within him years later. He has said that the voice of his wife Carina Lau can bring him back to reality.

Leung admits that he has a tendency to stay in his comfort zone and work with familiar teams and filmmakers. Over the course of his career, he has worked with Wong Kar-wai eight times (including See You Tomorrow, which Wong wrote), three times with John Woo, three times with Derek Yee, and twice with Hou Hsiao-hsien. He has also worked with the creators of Infernal Affairs (Andrew Lau, Alan Mak, Felix Chong) on three other films: Confession of Pain (2006), The Silent War (2012), and The Goldfinger (2023). In recent years, Leung has become more adventurous and willing to try new things; this includes collaborating with new directors and taking on his first Hollywood role. In 2005, he signed with an American agent with the intention to appear in a Hollywood film. Producer Kevin Feige announced at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con that Leung will join the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the villain in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, marking his Hollywood debut. Leung's character Wenwu is a composite character of Fu Manchu and the Mandarin. The movie was released in 2021 and his performance was universally praised.

Leung also had a successful Cantopop and Mandarin pop singing career in the 1990s, which he abandoned to focus on acting. He still occasionally sings for his films; the theme song of Infernal Affairs which he performed with Andy Lau is one of the Top 10 Song of 2003 and won the 22nd Hong Kong Film Awards' Best Original Film Song.

During the promotion of the film Hero, some commentators in Hong Kong alleged that Leung expressed the view that the Tiananmen Square demonstration crackdown was necessary to maintain stability. Leung made a single comment in response that he may have been misquoted and his statement taken out of context.

Leung speaks Cantonese, English and Mandarin. Lust, Caution (2007) is the first film where he used his own voice in a Mandarin-speaking role (his dialogue in Hero is dubbed) and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) is his first English-speaking role, despite being fluent in the language.

In 2023, Leung starred in the World War II spy thriller Hidden Blade, directed by Cheng Er, and the crime drama The Goldfinger, along with Andy Lau. The Goldfinger is the duo's first collaboration since Infernal Affairs III in 2003. He also made a cameo appearance in the music video for NewJeans's "Cool With You".

Preview screening of Silent Friend in the presence of Tony Leung Chiu-wai, at the Cinéma Capitole (Swiss Film Archive, 2026).

After making his first European film, Silent Friend, with Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi, Leung plans to make a return to television after almost 40 years, with a miniseries currently in production.

Personal life Relationships Leung publicly dated fellow TVB actress Margie Tsang in an on-again, off-again relationship from 1982 to 1988. In 1986, during one of their breakups, Leung briefly dated Kitty Lai, his co-star at the time in New Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre, before getting back together with Tsang. Leung and Tsang broke up permanently in 1988 and he has been in a relationship with Carina Lau since 1989. They began their romantic relationship in 1989 after working together on a Hong Kong production of Run For Your Wife and dated for 19 years before marrying in Bhutan in 2008. They had known each other since The Clones in 1984, and also co-starred together in Duke of Mount Deer (1984), Police Cadet (1984, 1985, 1988), The Yangs' Saga (1985), Days of Being Wild (1991), He Ain't Heavy, He's My Father (1993), Ashes of Time (1994), and 2046 (2005).

In 1990, during the filming of Days of Being Wild, Lau was abducted for several hours. Leung dropped out of the film to spend more time with her. Wong Kar-wai said, "Originally, there were plans for Days of Being Wild I and II, and the sequence featuring Leung was meant to be the opening scene of the second movie. But two things happened, one of which was that Days of Being Wild didn't do well in Hong Kong, so the producers said, 'No Part 2.' The other reason was Lau's kidnapping."

On 21 July 2008, the couple married in Bhutan. The wedding ceremony was directed by Wong Kar-wai and attended by numerous celebrities including Faye Wong, Li Yapeng, Bridgitte Lin, Cecilia Yip, Ti Lung and Chang Chen. The event gained significant media attention in Hong Kong, with media companies spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover the wedding party.

According to Ming Pao Daily News, Faye Wong and Li Yapeng had taken the couple to India in 2007 to visit the 17th Karmapa. The Karmapa's counsel helped them resolve a crisis in their relationship, and he also suggested Bhutan as a wedding venue.

Religion Leung is a Buddhist. He has donated to constructions of Buddhist institutions, performed his marriage in a Buddhist ceremony, attends Buddhist gatherings, and had been seen doing Buddhist palm greetings. He appeared pro bono in the Bhutanese Buddhist film Hema Hema: Sing Me a Song While I Wait (2016). In 2016, he was seen at a ceremony in India that was also attended by members of the Tibetan government-in-exile, which upset Chinese officials.

Filmography

Film

Year Title Role Notes 1983 Mad, Mad 83 1985 Young Cops Leung Siu-bo Fascinating Affairs 1986 The Lunatics Doggie Love Unto Waste Tony Cheung 1987 Happy Go Lucky Wei People's Hero Sai 1988 I Love Maria Chong Chi-keung 1989 My Heart is that Eternal Rose Cheung Seven Warriors Wong Wai-mo A City of Sadness Wen Ching 1990 Bullet in the Head Ben / Ah B Days of Being Wild Gambler Uncredited 1991 The Royal Scoundrel Beach boy Don't Fool Me Chiang Ho-chie Fantasy Romance Stupid Shing Great Pretenders Snake Wai The Tigers Tau-pi A Chinese Ghost Story III Little Monk Sap-fong The Banquet Wai Jai 1992 Hard Boiled Alan Kong Leung Three Summers Wai Lucky Encounter Wai The Days of Being Dumb Fei 1993 Butterfly and Sword Mang Sing-wan The Eagle Shooting Heroes Au-yeung Fung Tom, Dick and Hairy Chan Dai-man Come Fly the Dragon Lau Ka-lun Hero – Beyond the Boundary of Time Wai Siu-bo The Magic Crane Ma Kwan-mo End of the Road Fan Lung Two of a Kind Lam Dai-chi He Ain't Heavy, He's My Father Chor Yuen 1994 Always Be the Winners Third Master Sha Chungking Express Cop 633 The Returning Chung Ashes of Time Blind Swordsman 1995 Mack the Knife Doctor Mack Lau Heaven Can't Wait Wong Dai-fung Cyclo Poet 1996 Blind Romance Wing War of the Underworld Hung Fei 1997 Happy Together Lai Yiu-fai 97 Aces Go PlacesCui Qiang Chinese Midnight Express Ching On 1998 The Longest Nite Inspector Sam Timeless Romance Lau Yat-lo Flowers of Shanghai Wang Liansheng Your Place or Mine! Cheung Suk-wai 1999 Gorgeous Albert 2000 Tokyo Raiders Lam Kwai-yan In the Mood for Love Chow Mo-wan Healing Hearts Lawrence 2001 Fighting for Love Tung Choi Love Me, Love My Money Richard "Bastard" Ma 2002 Chinese Odyssey 2002 Li Yilong Infernal Affairs Chan Wing-yan Hero Broken Sword 2003 My Lucky Star Lai Liu-po / Lai Ma-bo Infernal Affairs III Chan Wing-yan Sound of Colors Ho Yuk-ming 2004 Super Model HimselfCameo 2046 Chow Mo-wan 2005 Seoul Raiders Lam Kwai-yan 2006 Confession of Pain Detective Lau Ching-hei 2007 Lust, Caution Mr. Yee 2008 Red Cliff: Part 1 Zhou Yu 2009 Red Cliff: Part 22011 The Great Magician Chang Hsien2012 The Silent War He Bing 2013 The Grandmaster Ip Man 2016 Hema HemaDeer / Serene Mask See You Tomorrow Chen Mo 2018 Monster Hunt 2 Tu Sigu Europe Raiders Lam Kwai-yan 2021 Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings Xu Wenwu / The Mandarin Hollywood debut 2022 Where the Wind Blows Nam Kong2023 Hidden Blade Mr. He The Goldfinger Ching Yat-yin 2025 Fox Hunt Dai YichenSilent FriendTony Wong

Television Year Title Role Notes 1981 The Young Heroes of Shaolin Shaolin monk 1982 Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils monk, episode 44 The Legend of Master So waiter Manager & Messenger general manager Hong Kong '82 Wut Lik Sap Yat Hung Kwok-choi Soldier of Fortune Ying Chi-him The Emissary brother 1983 The Superpower Kwok Hak-chung Beyond the Rose Garden Tin-yau Encounter with Fortune Angels and Devils Kong Ho-man 1984 The Clones Cheung Ka-wai / Chiang Ka-wai The Duke of Mount Deer Wai Siu-bo It's a Long Way Home Yau Ga-kei Police Cadet '84 Cheung Wai-kit No Regrets for Our Youth Frankie 1985 The Rough Ride Chow Kim-hung Police Cadet '85 Cheung Wai-kit The Yang's Saga Yeung Yin-chi (Yeung Chat-long) / Duke of Thunder 1986 New Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre Cheung Mo-kei 1987 The Grand Canal Cheung Sam-long 1988 Police Cadet '88 Cheung wai-kit Behind Silk Curtains Lin Kar-yip Everybody's Somebody's Favourite Two Most Honorable Knights "Little Fishie" Kong Siu-yu 1989 Ode to Gallantry Shek Po-tin / Shek Chung-yuk

Music video appearances + Year Title Artist 2002The NameThe Name 2023 Cool with You NewJeans

Discography

Accolades

International honours

Jury president at the 2024 Tokyo International Film Festival for its section 'Main competition'.

Footnotes