Film actress and former beauty queen Pauline Chan Po-lin committed suicide yesterday in Shanghai, just three weeks after giving birth to a boy.
The 30-year-old leapt from a window in her 17th floor apartment at around 5pm. Some reports said she also slashed her wrists. It is understood that her body had been transferred to a hospital in the city for examination. Shanghai police declined to comment last night.
Her agent Chan Hau-chi confirmed the news and told reporters that his client was suspected by her mother to have become suicidal soon after the birth of her child. She was understood to have separated from the boy's father.
After appearing in the Miss Asia Pageant at the age of 17, Chan went from model to soft-porn star to pop singer. She was starring in a Taiwanese television drama before she died.
Chan was known for her troubled and temperamental behaviour. She was fined in November 2000 for assaulting a security guard and a reporter after she was refused entry to a concert. Chan said she had acted under the influence of four days' worth of medicine taken hours earlier.
She was suspected to be suffering psychological problems after she set a pillow on fire in March 2000, causing a blaze at her Mid-Levels flat.