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Profile
- Name: Leslie Cheung / Cheung Kwok Wing
- Chinese: 张国荣
- Birthdate: September 12, 1956 - April 1, 2003
- Birthplace: Hong Kong
- University: Leeds University, England
- Height: 175 cm.
- Blood Type: O
Bio
The late Leslie Cheung (Cheung Kwok Wing) was born in Hong Kong in 1956 and
educated in England. He entered Hong Kong show business as a singer in 1980. After
joining a training course for actors at a TV station he began acting in TV dramas and
films; his appearance as a mother-fixated golden boy in Patrick Tam’s NOMAD (1982)
established him as a serious actor and marked the start of a decade of super-stardom in
which he shuttled between hit albums, stadium-sized concerts and films. Three film roles
in particular brought him to international attention: as a cop in John Woo’s A BETTER
TOMORROW (1986), as a 1930s opium addict in Stanley Kwan’s ROUGE (1986) and
as a 1960s playboy who seduces and abandons a string of women in Wong Kar Wai’s
DAYS OF BEING WILD (1990). In the early 1990s he announced his formal retirement
as a singer and moved for a while to Vancouver. But he took on ever more ambitious
roles in such films as Chen Kaige’s FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (1993), Wong Kar
Wai’s ASHES OF TIME (1994), Chen Kaige’s TEMPTRESS MOON (1996) and Wong
Kar Wai’s HAPPY TOGETHER (1997).
On April 1, 2003, Leslie Cheung committed suicide, by jumping to his death from the 24th floor of the Mandrain Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong. He left behind a suicide note, noting his struggle with clinical depression.
Cheung was noted as one of the few Asian male stars to play openly gay characters (he was bi-sexual himself).
Movies
