Chow Yun Fat

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Chow Yun Fat, born May 18, 1955, on Lamma Island, Hong Kong, China. Dubbed “The Coolest Actor in the World,” by the Los Angeles Times in 1995, Chow Yun-Fat grew up selling dim sum on his native Lamma Island to help support his poor family. When he was 10, the family moved to Kowloon, the part of Hong Kong that is connected to mainland China. Chow dropped out of school at age 17 and took a series of jobs before signing up for a training course at TVB, Hong Kong’s leading television station, in 1973.

Over the next decade, Chow became well known among Hong Kong TV and film audiences for his roles in the prime time soap Hotel, the gangster series Shanghai Bund, and films like The Story of Woo Viet (1981). In the mid-1980s, after a string of poorly received films, many thought his career was over. It was the landmark Hong Kong gangster drama A Better Tomorrow (1986), directed by John Woo, that made Chow an international superstar and established his reputation as a uniquely kind-hearted and honorable action hero. The film broke all box office records in China at the time and made Woo one of the world’s most sought-after action directors. Chow and Woo teamed on a number of other successful action films, including A Better Tomorrow II (1987), The Killer (1989), and Hard Boiled (1992).