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Needing You (2000)

Although she had a clutch of film credits to her name before Needing You, this was Sammi Cheng’s breakout performance. She stars opposite Andy Lau in this amusing and touching romcom and the pair had instant chemistry. The film was a huge success at the box office – a financial hit for directors Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai, which allowed them to make more of the kind of gritty gangster movies like The Mission and Too Many Ways to be Number One that were more popular with critics than the general public.

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Love on a Diet (2001)

So popular, in fact, was the combination of Sammi and Andy that Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai paired them together in another film the following year (not for the last time either, as they would be the stars of To’s 2013 film Blind Detective as well). Another adorable romcom, this time Cheng and Lau are nearly unrecognisable as they are shoved into fat suits, Cheng playing an overweight woman looking to shed the pounds in order to win back her former boyfriend. Some take umbrage at Love on a Diet’s implication that you must be thin to be happy, but the two leads play their parts with such charm that the film won us over anyway.

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My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (2002)

Yet another collaboration with To and Wai, My Left Eye Sees Ghosts at least gives Cheng a different lead actor to play off. This time she works alongside Sean Lau as a woman who, following a car crash and damage to her eye, starts seeing ghosts. But rather than a horror film like The Sixth Sense this is another romantic comedy in disguise. Cheng manages to give her character – a mourning widow – real depth with her acting, but at the same time, given the nature of the film, she is not afraid to look silly and play her part for laughs.

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Everlasting Regret (2005)

Directed by Stanley Kwan, Everlasting Regret is very much in the mould of the director’s most famous works, the Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui hit Rouge and the Maggie Cheung-led Center Stage. Both were period pieces set in 1920s/30s China and that is where Everlasting Regret begins, with Cheng playing Qiyao, an attractive young lady who finishes runner-up in a Miss Shanghai beauty contest. From there, the film recounts the Jazz Age heyday of Shanghai and the transformation of China in the momentous decades that followed. Cheng is striking in the period costumes and the subtleties of her acting, and the wide range of emotions her character experiences throughout the years is equally memorable. Cheng was nominated for best actress at the Hong Kong Film Awards that year, but sadly lost out.

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Fagara (2019)

Heiward Mak’s family drama was nominated for 11 awards at this year’s Hong Kong Film Awards, with Sammi Cheng up for best actress again. Sadly, she lost out to Zhou Dongyu’s acclaimed performance in Better Days, with Sammi’s continuing film awards disappointment (she was also nominated for best actress, again without winning, for her role in Blind Detective) was one of the headlines following the Covid-hit ceremony. None of which, however, should take anything away from what is an extremely mature and accomplished performance by Cheng – probably her best to date. She has the unenviable task of portraying the most uptight of three sisters – as Branch, Megan Lai got to be the cool one; while Cherry (Li Xiaofeng) was the exuberant youthful one – but despite her frequent exasperation at the mess left behind by her departed father, Cheng lends her character real heart and warmth.

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