As Tony Leung Chiu-wai turns 61, a look back at some of his best movie roles, from In the Mood for Love to Marvel’s Shang-Chi, and his early years in TV

If you did not see Tony Leung Chiu-wai in ’80s Hong Kong TV series, then you may have seen him in Wong Kar-wai films – or playing a Marvel villain
We take a look back at the actor’s career, from the small screen in Hong Kong to Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love to Marvel’s Shang-Chi

Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

Ashlyn Chak

Published: 7:15am, 27 Jun 2023

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Anyone remotely acquainted with Asian cinema knows his name, and even the harshest critic could not make a list of the top 10 Asian films without naming one in which he appears.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai has had an exceptionally decorated career that very few in the city, and East Asia as a whole, can match.

From a Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) trainee to his emergence as one of the city’s most talented movie stars and rise to international fame as the charming, sociopathic supervillain in a Marvel movie, we look back at some of Leung’s career highlights as he prepares to celebrate his 61st birthday on June 27.

It was Stephen Chow Sing-chi, a close friend, who encouraged him to enrol with him in TVB’s acting class in 1981. Only Leung made the cut.

Leung in a still from “Chungking Express”.

He graduated the following year at age 20 and spent the next eight years with the network, during which he did mostly comedy work. He was quickly promoted to play lead roles in successful prime-time series such as The Duke of Mount Deer (1984), Police Cadet ’84 (1984) and New Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre (1986).

In 1990, Leung left TVB to pursue a film career. By that time he had already acted in several films, and earned Hong Kong Film Award nominations for roles in Stanley Kwan Kam-pang’s Love Unto Waste (1986) and Derek Yee Tung-sing’s People’s Hero (1987).

Maggie Cheung Man-yuk, Leung (left) and Wong Kar-wai promoting “In the Mood for Love” in Cannes in May 2000. Photo: AFP

It was not until he began working with director Wong Kar-wai that his true potential was realised. After a brief, uncredited appearance in the 1990 film Days of Being Wild, Leung became Wong’s go-to leading man.

The two collaborated on seven films, including Ashes of Time (1994), Chungking Express (1994), Happy Together (1997), In the Mood for Love (2000), 2046 (2004) and The Grandmaster (2013), which between them earned Leung 12 best actor awards, one of them from the Cannes Film Festival in 2000.

At the 2015 premiere of The Grandmaster 3D, Wong jokingly compared Leung’s acting to tofu: “Fine, decent, can be meaty or plain, good inside and out.”

Leung (right) and Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing in a scene of “Happy Together”. Photo: courtesy of Film Co

Leung in a still from “2046”. Photo: @Jayveesto/Twitter

One of Hong Kong’s highest-paid actors, with a net worth of US$20 million, Leung’s haul of five best actor wins in the Hong Kong Film Awards and three in the Golden Horse Awards are both records.

His performances have been of a consistently high quality. For the Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002-2003), directed by Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak Siu-fai, for example, he earned three best actor awards.

Another notable title in Leung’s filmography is 2007’s Lust, Caution, directed by Taiwanese filmmaker Ang Lee, who, at the film’s release, said: “Leung is like a director’s dream. Whatever you think a dream actor should be like, that’s what he is. He was much better than I thought he would be.”

Leung in a still from “Lust, Caution”. Photo: @neonmnemonic/Twitter

For Lust, Caution, Leung won best actor at both the Golden Horse Awards and the Asian Film Awards.

In the 2010s, Leung’s output dropped significantly; he appeared in only seven films compared to 19 in the 2000s and around 40 in the 1990s.

In 2021 he broke the mould, becoming the first Hong Kong actor to make it to the Marvel Cinematic Universe with his role as Xu Wenwu, a hard-to-hate supervillain, in the Chinese-inspired superhero movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

Leung in a still from “The Grandmaster”. Photo: Jet Tone Production

Leung was reportedly paid US$7.7 million (HK$60 million) for his role in the first Marvel Studios film with a predominantly Asian cast.

In early 2023, Leung became the first Chinese actor to be honoured with a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Film Festival, with its director calling him a “charismatic performer” whose transnational career bridges “television, popular culture, and art cinema at different latitudes”.

Leung has rarely revealed much of his personal or inner life to the public, and is known to have an introverted personality. He only joined Instagram in April 2021, and his first posts to the social media platform were Shang-Chi promotional photos. He posted for the first time on Douyin, a social media platform in China, only in 2023.

Leung in a still from “Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings”. Photo: Marvel Studios

He has projected a mostly apolitical public image, although in a 2002 interview he was quoted as saying that, during the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, in which hundreds, perhaps thousands of student protesters were killed by troops, “what the Chinese government did was right – to maintain stability”. Leung claimed to have been misquoted.