In Remembrance: Bill Tung Piu

     Bill Tung Piu, the Hong Kong comic supporting actor best known for his appearances in some of Jackie Chan’s most popular films, has passed away on February 22, 2006. He was 73.

     Born in a stable Hong Kong in 1933, Tung’s family was closely associated with horses and horse racing. Learning to ride at age 9, Tung was racing as a jockey by age 12 and later followed in his father and grandfather’s footsteps and became a horse trainer. In 1967, Tung began hosting horse racing television and radio programs and soon became well known as a horse racing commentator.

     Tung made his first film appropriately enough as a racetrack announcer is 1981’s Security Unlimited. For a majority of his film career Tung played characters who were the lead character’s uncles or other paternal figure. In the four It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad World comedies, Tung played the patriarch of a family whose comic misadventures are precipitated by a large lottery win. In Look Out Officer! (1990) he played the ghost of a murdered police offer who helps rookie cop Stephen Chow to solve his murder.

     Tung’s best known film pairings were with Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan. In Chan’s Police Story series, he played Chan’s police commissioner superior who was also his uncle. Among the films he also appeared with Chan in include Project A, Part 2 (1987), Miracles (1989), Drunken Master II (1994), Rumble In The Bronx (1996) and Who Am I? (1998) as well as in the Chan-directed The Inspector Wears Skirts (1988) and its 1989 sequel.

     His last film appearance was in 1996’s Police Story 4: First Strike.