Chow Yun-fat formerly known as Donald Chow,is a Hong Kong actor known in Asia for his collaborations with filmmaker John Woo in the bloodshed genre heroic action films A Better Tomorrow, The Killer and Hard-Boiled, and in the West for his roles as Li Mu-bai in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Sao Feng in Pirates of the Caribbean.

He mainly acts in drama films and has won three Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Actor and two Golden Horse Awards for Best Actor in Taiwan.

CHOW YUN – FAT AGE

Chow was born on May 18, 1955 in Lamma Island, Hong Kong. He turns 64 in 2019.

CHOW YUN-FAT PARENTS

He was born to his mother Chan Lai-Fong, a housekeeper and market gardener, and his father Chow Yung-Wan, who worked on a Shell Oil Company tanker. Chow grew up in a farming community on Lamma Island, in a house without electricity.

Chow-Yun-Fat with his wife Jasmine Tan

He woke up at dawn every morning to help his mother sell herbal jelly and Hakka tea pudding on the streets; in the afternoon he went to work in the fields. His family moved to Kowloon when he was ten years old.

EDUCATION CHOW YUN-FAT

Chow left school to help support the family by doing odd jobs, including a bellhop,postman, camera salesman and taxi driver. His life began to change after college when he answered a newspaper advertisement, and his acting-trainee application was accepted by TVB, the local television station. He signed a three-year contract with the studio and made his acting debut. Chow has become an idiot and a familiar face in internationally exported soap operas.

CHOW YUN-FAT MARRIED

Chow has been married twice, the first in 1983 to Candice Yu, an Asia Television actress, but the marriage only lasted nine months. Chow married Singaporean Jasmine Tan in 1986.

CHOW YUN-FAT GIRL

Chow and his second wife Jasmine Tan gave birth to a stillborn daughter in 1991. Chow has a goddaughter, Celine Ng, a former model for Chickeeduck, McDonald’s, Toys’R’Us and other companies.

NET WORTH OF CHOW YUN-FAT

Chow was ranked the second highest-earning actor in Hong Kong, earning HK$170 million ($21.9 million).His reported net worth is 5.6 billion Hong Kong dollars ($714 million).

CHOW YUN-FAT SIZE

Chow stands at an average height of 1.83m.

VIDEO GAMES CHOW YUN-FAT

• Stranglehold
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (video game)
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (video game)

CHOW YUN-FAT ACTING CAREER

how his acting career began at the age of 18, working for a television studio in Hong Kong. By the age of 21, Chow was already a major presence on Chinese television and had begun to embark on a film career. He ended up staying at the studio for 14 years, completing numerous films and over 1,000 episodes in various series; act in soap operas, dramas and comedies.

While filming in Hong Kong, Chow was repeatedly recognized for his performances. In 87, 88 and 90, he won the Hong Kong Academy for Best Actor, the Taiwan Golden Horse for “Best Actor” in 85, 1987, and the Best Actor Award at the Asian Pacific Festival in 1985. But what no matter how many awards Chow won, he would remain unknown to Western audiences.

Everything changed when he met John Woo. John needed an actor that the public could recognize as full of love, very effusive for his family, his brotherhood. Together they made the blockbuster, A Better Tomorrow III (1989), which launched both director and actor internationally, followed by The Killer (1989) and Hard-Boiled (1992) which are also become legendary. After Hong Kong’s reunification with mainland China, many filmmakers and actors moved to the United States. Chow did the same, and in 1998 he resurfaced in the American film The Replacement Killers and The Corruptor in 1999.

For his role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Yun-Fat won widespread acclaim, and although he continued to work in Chinese films, he also made appearances in American blockbusters such as Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (2007).

BOOK CHOW YUN-FAT

Chow released his first photo collection in Hong Kong on June 26, 2008, which includes photos taken on the sets of his films. Proceeds from the sale of the book were donated to victims of the Sichuan earthquake. Published by Louis Vuitton, the books were sold at Vuitton stores in Hong Kong and Paris.

CHOW YUN-FAT AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS

• Best Actor Nomination for Hong Kong 1941
• Best Female Actor Nomination
• Best Supporting Actor Nomination for Love Unto Waste
• Best Actor for a Better Future
• Best Actor Nomination for Prison on Fire
• Best Actor Nomination for An Autumn’s Tale
• Best Actor for City on Fire
• Nomination for Best Original Song from a Movie for The Diary of a Great Man
• Best Original Movie Song Nomination for Triads: The Inside Story

CHOW YUN-FAT MOVIES

• bulletproof monk

• once a thief

• Tiger on Beat

• god of players

• let the bullets fly

• Diary of a great man

• The return of God of Gamblers

• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

• 100 ways to murder your wife

• Treasure hunt

• spiritual love

• The romantic star

CHARITY CHOW YUN-FAT

Award-winning actor Chow Yun-Fat said in October that he would donate his entire net worth to charity, a whopping 5 billion yuan (about $723 million), to acclaim from netizens. he intends to do so. My wife is very supportive of my decision, he said. I can’t take the money after death. Why not donate it to a group that needs it?

The money is not mine; I’m just keeping it temporarily. Money is not what can really bring you happiness. The most difficult thing in our life is not knowing how much money you earn, but how to maintain a calm and peaceful attitude towards our life, he said in the interview.

Chow’s fame took off as a star in Hong Kong action films in the 1980s and gained international acclaim as the lead in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000. Although a superstar and financially successful, Chow still likes to walk around in public and use public transport. He also said that he only uses around US$800 per month.