Cheung was born on September 12, 1956 in Hong Kong, the youngest of ten children. He was fascinated by cinema from an early age (his father was the tailor to screen legend William Holden) and following graduation from secondary school, he studied drama at Leeds University in Great Britain. Upon his return to Hong Kong, he entered in the 1976 ATV Asian Music Contest, and took second prize. Cheung used this opportunity to cultivate his first taste of stardom as one of Asia's most popular singers and a celebrity to Chinese-speaking people around the world.
His high profile in pop music led to some film work, which at first was light, teen fare. The turning point came when John Woo cast him as the rookie cop opposite Chow Yun-fat in the wildly popular Hong Kong action flick A Better Tomorrow (1986). The film's success allowed Cheung to expand his film range and his next role was as an opium-smoking playboy in Stanley Kwan's Rouge (1987), a romantic ghost story that fluctuated between the Hong Kong of the '30s and the '80s. That film helped Cheung present his versatility as a romantic leading man as well as his skill at action sequences.
The '90s saw Cheung steadily improve as an actor with some varied roles: a cunning jewel thief in John Woo's slick suspense drama, Once a Thief (1990); a suave villain in Wong Kar-Wai's Days of Being Wild (1991); and his extraordinary star turn as the gay, female-impersonating Chinese opera singer Cheng Dieyi in Chen Kaige's brilliant historical drama Farewell My Concubine (1993). His portrayal of Cheng, who experiences bitterness and regret throughout his life, and is driven to suicide by a failed love affair, was one of great sensitivity, and an incandescent charisma that few knew he possessed. The film won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and rightly earned Cheung international acclaim.
Cheung continued to tackle interesting parts after the success of Concubine: a depraved opium addict in another stylish film by Chen Kaige, Temptress Moon (1996); a gutsy performance as the vituperative Ho Po-wing, one of a pair of gay Chinese lovers on holiday in Buenos Aires in Wong Kar-Wai's sexually explicit Happy Together (1997); and most recently, a man possessed by a dead girlfriend who tries to lure him into jumping to his death (another eerie parallel to his own suicide) in Chi-Leung Law's horror film Inner Senses (2002), which earned him a best actor at this last Sunday's Hong Kong Film Awards. He is survived by numerous family members.
by Michael T. Toole
