Maggie Cheung in her own words, on Wong Kar-wai and In the Mood for Love, marrying Olivier Assayas and being an actress, not just a film star

The darling of Hong Kong film in the 1990s had a lot to say about filmmaking, from getting her break with lowbrow Wong Jing to working with auteur Wong Kar-wai

She talked about preferring dramas to comedy and working ‘with feelings and emotions’ to making action films, and the dearth of good roles in Chinese films

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Maggie Cheung at an interview with the Post in 2001. Photo: SCMP.

Published: 4:15am, 19 Jun 2022

Taiwan-born Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia was the reigning screen queen of the early 1990s, but Maggie Cheung Man-yuk was the movie star that Hong Kong cinema-goers most identified with.

Cheung, who was born in Hong Kong but grew up in the UK, was ubiquitous at that time, making around five films a year across all genres.

Cheung worked as a sales assistant when she returned to Hong Kong because, as she told the Post, she “hated 9 to 5 office jobs”, and got her big break after earning the runner-up prize in the 1983 Miss Hong Kong Pageant, for which she was also judged “Miss Photogenic”.

Lowbrow producer Wong Jing spotted her and cast her in the comedy Prince Charming with Kenny Bee; it was a big hit, and kick-started Cheung’s movie career.

She later went on to work for luminaries like Tsui Hark, Stanley Kwan Kam-pang, Peter Chan Ho-sun, Wong Kar-wai, and mainland China’s Zhang Yimou, as well as French director Olivier Assayas, to whom she was married for a time.

We recall what Cheung has had to say over the years about the various stages of her career.