Mainland Chinese stars who made it big in Hong Kong: from action film icons Jet Li and Donnie Yen to Cantopop royals Leon Lai and Faye Wong
What may be less well known is that many celebrities who first gained popularity in Hong Kong were actually born in China. Did you know that about the following household names?
Carina Lau
Leon Lai
Donnie Yen
Jet Li
Jet Li, one of the most influential international martial arts stars after Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, was born in Beijing, China in 1963. Nicknamed the “King of Kung Fu”, Li shot to fame in Hong Kong after starring in Shaolin Temple (1982) which broke Hong Kong’s box office record for a martial arts film with more than 16 million tickets sold. Almost a decade on, 1991’s Once Upon a Time in China achieved ticket sales of US$3.8 million in Hong Kong alone.
Faye Wong
Raymond Lam
TVB star and singer Raymond Lam was born in Xiamen and moved to Hong Kong with his family when he was two. He became a TVB mainstay after his breakthrough role in 2001 in A Step into the Past. In 2007, he broke into the music industry with his debut album Finding Love in Memories, making him the bestselling new artist in Hong Kong that year, selling 26,000 copies within the first three weeks of its release.
Fala Chen
Want more stories like this? Sign up here. Follow STYLE on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.
- In the 1980s it was TVB shows, then came the golden age of Hong Kong’s film industry, the ‘Hollywood of the East’, and the rise of Cantopop across Asia
- Fala Chen stars in the upcoming Marvel film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, with vintage In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express star Tony Leung