Profile | Why Michael Tse, Hong Kong actor behind Laughing Gor, is a lesson in resilience
Michael Tse’s journey from backup dancer to Young and Dangerous henchman to leading film and TV actor showcases his endurance and tenacity
Back in the first decade of his entertainment career, which began in the mid-1980s, Michael Tse Tin-wah was a face you recognised but a name you might have struggled to place.
But his endurance paid off. In 2009, after more than two decades of playing the sidekick, the villain or the comic relief, he was cast in a supporting role in the TVB police procedural series E.U.
Operating under the street name Laughing Gor, Tse infused his character, an undercover policeman embedded in a triad syndicate, with a cocktail of cynicism, swagger and hidden vulnerability. With his hooded eyes and that signature crooked smile, he looked every bit a man surviving on his wits.
When the writers killed the character off midway through the season, something unprecedented happened: viewers flooded the internet with digital memorials and many demanded his resurrection.
“I was a bit shocked at how well received my character was and how many people actually cried when he died,” he told the South China Morning Post around four months after his character died on screen. “At that moment, I was over the moon. Every now and then, I’d go on to the blog to check people’s messages for Laughing.”