On April 1, 2003, when many people were playing April Fool's jokes, Leslie Cheung, the Hong Kong actor and pop legend, played his biggest and his final role when he jumped from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong. He died at the age of 46.
Tomorrow, hundreds of his fans from around the world are expected to arrive in Hong Kong to commemorate the first anniversary of his death.
For 20 years he was one of the Chinese-speaking world’s most popular artists and, although he decided to end it all on April 1, he will never be forgotten.
Though he featured in several of John Woo’s action films, Cheung was famous for being one of the few Asian stars to play openly gay characters, a choice that gained resonance when he came out after playing one of his most famous gay roles in Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together.
Born in Hong Kong on September 12, 1956, Cheung was the youngest of 10 children. Influenced early on by both the film world -- his father was actor William Holden’s tailor -- and his parents’ divorce, Cheung went on to study at England’s Leeds University.
After returning to Hong Kong, he started his singing career by coming second in the 1976 ATV Asian Music Contest. His subsequent fame as a pop singer led to work on television, film, and the stage.
In 1981, Cheung became a real star with the success of his album The Wind Blows On, which established him as Asia’s most popular singer. It was not until 1986 that Cheung’s film career really gained recognition, thanks to his casting as a cop opposite Chow Yun-fat in John Woo’s popular gangster film A Better Tomorrow. The film’s success enabled Cheung to develop his film career and in 1988, the same year he starred in the sequel to A Better Tomorrow, he played the opium-smoking playboy lead in Stanley Kwan’s Rouge, a romantic ghost story set between the Hong Kong of the 1930s and 1987. Rouge was one of the most widely acclaimed films to come out of Hong Kong during the 1980s and helped to establish Cheung as a romantic leading man as well as an action star.
The actor continued to work in a variety of films with some of the industry’s most respected directors throughout the 1990s. In 1990, he starred in Woo’s action film Once a Thief, again alongside fellow action star Chow Yun-fat. Later, he got the chance to expand his acting career in Wong Kar-wai’s Days of Being Wild by playing Yuddy, a totally bad guy who uses most of the women in his life.
Cheung emigrated to Canada in 1992, but soon returned to Hong Kong. In 1993, Cheung earned international acclaim and recognition for his performance as an opera star specializing in female roles in Chen Kaige’s drama Farewell, My Concubine. In 1997, again with Wong, Cheung starred in perhaps the most daring role of his career as Ho Po-wing, one of a pair of gay Chinese lovers stranded in Buenos Aires in Happy Together. The film was one of the most controversial movies of the year and one of the most acclaimed.
Continuing to appear in numerous films, Cheung won acclaim for his affecting roles. His unique persona continued to earn the respect of longtime fans.
When his death was announced on April 1, 2003, the international film community suffered a heavy blow and thousands of fans had difficulty coming to terms with how an actor of such talent could end his life while in the prime of his career.
(Shenzhen Daily March 31, 2004)
