Profile of Maggie Cheung on Famous Like Me

For Cheung Ho Yee (張可頤) whose given name in English is also Maggie, see Maggie Cheung Ho Yee.

Maggie Cheung Man-yuk (張曼玉; pinyin: Zhāng Mànyù; Cantonese: dzoeng1 maan6 juk9/juk2) (born September 20, 1964) is a Hong Kong film star who has been cast in more than 80 films since the 1980s.

Cheung moved from Hong Kong to England with her family when she was 8 years old. She returned to Hong Kong after finishing secondary school and worked as a model for a clothing store.

She won second place in the Miss Hong Kong pageant in 1983 at the age of 19, and went on to become a semi-finalist at the Miss World pageant. She was later cast in a number of TV dramas and movies. Her career rocketed after she co-starred in Police Story, as Jackie Chan's girlfriend.

She has won numerous Best Actress awards and is best known around the world for her roles in Police Story (1985), Super Cop (1992), Actress (aka Centre Stage, 1992), Chinese Box (1997), In the Mood for Love (2000) and Hero (2003). She won HK's top actress award in 1990.

Throughout the 1990s Cheung increased the depth of her acting skills and chose projects with more care. She began to divide her time between Europe and Hong Kong, and spent increasing time in Paris, becoming fluent in French, her acting given more of an edge, and her intellectual depth increasing. Freed from the constraints of habitually playing an ingenue, she took more difficult roles, and developed her characters increasingly with greater skill and sensitivity. Her ability to react with great precision and emotional honesty within a film has led to successes in Europe, particularly at the Cannes film festival, and she began looking for films with better scripts, more chance for her to explore characters, and to take theatrical risks.

The success of director Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love left Cheung and costar Tony Leung Chiu Wai as two of Asia's most internationally recognized stars.

In December 1998, Cheung married French film maker Olivier Assayas, who directed her in Irma Vep and encouraged her to reduce her workload to two films a year. The marriage lasted for three years and the couple divorced in 2001. They have since collaborated on Clean (2004), which won Cheung a Best Actress Award from the Cannes Film Festival (the jury that year was led by Quentin Tarantino).

Local Hong Kong newspapers said in September 2003 that she was dating Guillaume Brochard, the former administrative president of a watch company for whom she has been modelling jewelery in Hong Kong. She is also a spokesperson for the Louis Vuitton companies in China, an important influence on contemporary Chinese fashion. Rumors are that she is working on actor's diaries on her various film projects, in the manner of Liv Ullman, and that these diaries may be published in the near future through a Paris publishing house.

Awards

• Berlin International Film Festival
  • Best Actress of Silver Berlin Bear for Centre Stage 阮玲玉 (1992)
• Cannes Film Festival
  • Best Actress for Clean (2004)
• Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards
  • Best Actress of Golden Horse Award for In the Mood for Love 花樣年華 (2000)
  • Best Actress of Golden Horse Award for Comrades, Almost a Love Story 甜蜜蜜 (1996)
  • Best Supporting Actress of Golden Horse Award for Red Dust 滾滾紅塵 (1990)
  • Best Actress of Golden Horse Award for Full Moon in New York 人在紐約 (1989)
• Hawaii International Film Festival
  • Award for Achievement in Acting
• Hong Kong Film Awards
  • Best Actress of Hong Kong Film Award for In the Mood for Love 花樣年華 (2001)
  • Best Actress of Hong Kong Film Award for The Soong Sisters 宋家皇朝 (1998)
  • Best Actress of Hong Kong Film Award for Comrades, Almost a Love Story 甜蜜蜜 (1996)
  • Best Actress of Hong Kong Film Award for Centre Stage 阮玲玉 (1993)
  • Best Actress of Hong Kong Film Award for Farewell China 愛在他鄉的季節 (1991)
  • Best Actress of Hong Kong Film Award for A Fishy Story 不脫襪的人 (1989)
• Hong Kong Film Critics Society Awards
  • Best Actress of HKFCS Award for Comrades, Almost a Love Story 甜蜜蜜 (1996)

Filmography, as actress, includes

• Clean (2004)
• 2046 (2004)
• Hero (2002)
• In the Mood for Love (2000)
• Augustin, King of Kung-Fu (2000)
• Sausalito (2000)
• Chinese Box (USA 1998)
• The Soong Sisters (1997)
• Irma Vep (1996)
• Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996)
• Ashes of Time (1994)
• In Between (1994)
• Mad Monk (1993)
• First Shot (1993)
• Executioners (1993)
• Boys are Easy (1993)
• Flying Dagger (1993)
• The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993)
• Enigma of Love (1993)
• Green Snake (1993)
• Holy Weapon (1993)
• The Heroic Trio (1993)
• The Bare-Footed Kid (1993)
• Millionaire Cop (1993)
• Police Story 3: Supercop (1992)
• Twin Dragons (1992)
• Moon Warriors (1992)
• What a Hero! (1992)
• New Dragon Gate Inn (1992)
• True Love (1992)
• All's Well, Ends Well (1992)
• Centre Stage (1992) aka Actress
• Rose (1992)
• Alan & Eric - Between Hello & Goodbye (1991)
• Will of Iron (1991)
• The Perfect Match (1991)
• Today's Hero (1991)
• Days of Being Wild (1991)
• Red Dust (1990)
• Farewell China (1990)
• Dragon From Russia (1990)
• Song of the Exile (1990)
• Heart into Hearts (1990)
• Full Moon in New York (1990)
• Doubles Cause Troubles (1989)
• The Iceman Cometh (1989)
• In Between Loves (1989)
• My Dear Son (1989)
• The Bachelor's Swan-Song (1989)
• Hearts No Flowers (1989)
• A Fishy Story (1989)
• Little Cop (1989)
• Last Romance (1988)
• Faithfully Yours (1988)
• The Game They Call Sex (1988)
• The Nowhereman (1988)
• Police Story 2 (1988)
• How to Pick Up Girls (1988)
• Moon, Star, Sun (1988)
• Mother vs. Mother (1988)
• As Tears Go By (1988)
• Double Fattiness (1988)
• Paper Marriage (1988)
• Love Soldier of Fortune (1988)
• Call Girl '88 (1988)
• Project A Part 2 (1987)
• The Romancing Star (1987)
• Heartbeat 100 (1987)
• Sister Cupid (1987)
• The Seventh Curse (1986)
• Happy Ghost 3 (1986)
• Lost Romance (1986)
• It's a Drink, It's a Bomb (1985)
• Police Story (1985)
• Modern Cinderella (1985)
• Behind the Yellow Line (1984)
• Prince Charming (1984)

TV Drama, as actress, includes

• Police Cadet '84 新紮師兄 (1984)
• The Fallen Family 武林世家

Source:

See also: Cinema of China

A character in the Read or Die television series is named after her.

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Maggie Cheung