What’s veteran Hong Kong actor Simon Yam’s most shocking X-rated film? Before hits like Young and Dangerous, Yam spent the 1990s making notoriously sexual and violent Category III flicks

Name: Simon Yam’s 5 biggest career achievements
Uploaded: 2021-03-19T06:15:48.000Z
Duration: 1 min 59 s
Description: Simon Yam’s 5 biggest career achievements

STORYDouglas Parkes

Mar 19 , 2021

Simon Yam Tat-wah has starred in hundreds of films over his long career – some of them controversial for their sexual or violent content. Photo: SCMP

Asian cinema: Hong Kong film

Yam has appeared in over 200 Hong Kong films including The Mission, Bullet in the Head and Election, winning an award for Echoes of the Rainbow in 2010

He’s starred opposite Carina Lau, Donnie Yen, Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Jackie Cheung … but has also made scandalous movies like Naked Killer and Doctor Lamb

A veteran of more than 200 Hong Kong films, Simon Yam Tat-wah is a screen legend in his hometown. With his natural charm and good looks, the 66-year-old has been a fixture in movies for over 40 years. Throughout his career he has worked with many of Hong Kong’s biggest stars including the likes of Carina Lau, John Woo, Donnie Yen, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Jackie Cheung and Johnnie To. Yam’s résumé includes legendary films like The Mission, Bullet in the Head, Election and Young and Dangerous.

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Simon Yam’s 5 biggest career achievements

Yet for all his accomplishments and commitment – including being stabbed back in 2019 while on promotional duties in China – Yam’s varied body of work also contains a number of much less praiseworthy movies. In the early and mid-90s, Yam was at the centre of Hong Kong’s craze for Category III movies – infamous films branded with the highest age rating possible, notorious for their violent and/or sexual content.

Eventually Yam moved on from such movies to become a credible actor – finally winning best actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2010 for his performance in Echoes of the Rainbow – but these films remain a part of his legacy, as well as marking a certain period in Hong Kong’s cinematic history.

Here are seven of Yam’s most controversial films.

Simon Yam at the 37th Hong Kong Film Awards ceremony. Photo: SCMP

Gigolo and Whore (1991)

The unappealing English title of this film ought to give the game away. An early Category III film – the rating was introduced at the end of 1988 – Gigolo and Whore is one of many films from this era that feature Yam as a gigolo (we’ll leave it to readers’ imaginations as to why Yam was typecast this way).