In Remembrance: Leslie Cheung

     Cantonese actor Leslie Cheung, best known to western audiences for his roles in Farewell My Concubine, A Better Tomorrow and the controversial Happy Together, has committed suicide on Tuesday, April 1, 2003 in Hong Kong. He was 46.

     Born Cheung Kwok-wing in Hong Kong on September 12, 1956, Cheung found himself encountering the movie industry early on when his father acted as tailor to actor William Holden who was in Hong Kong for the filming of The World of Suzie Wong. After his parents divorce, Cheung attended Leeds Univeristy in England.

     Returning to Hong Kong in 1976, he entered the 1976 ATV Asian Music Contest taking second place. He was able to parley his success into a contract performing on the Hong Kong television network RTV. From there he worked his success as a pop star into work on television, stage and several teen films.

     His first breakout role came in 1986, when he was cast opposite Chow Yun-Fat in John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow as the angry young police cadet Kit. He would also star in the genre films A Chinese Ghost Story, A Chinese Ghost Story Part 2, The Bride With White Hair, Bride With White Hair Part 2 and John Woo’s action picture Once A Thief.

     In 1993 he achieved even bigger success in Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine as an opera singer who specializes in female roles  caught in a love triangle with Fengyi Zhang (in a role originally offered to Jackie Chan) and Li Gong.

     In 1994, he teamed with director Wong Kar-Wai for the drama Ashes of Time. Although not happy with how Ashes of Time came out, Cheung did reteam with Wong Kar-Wai twice more for 1991’s Days of Being Wild and the controversial 1997 film Happy Together, the story of a pair of gay lovers (Cheung and Tony Leung) stranded in Buenos Aires.

     Since Cheung was one of the few Asian male stars to play openly gay characters as in Concubine, Happy Together and He’s a Woman, She’s A Man, gossip columns would frequently suggest he was gay in real life. Cheung denied these accusations however.

     Ironically, in his last film, Inner Senses, which was released last year, Cheung played a psychiatrist who becomes suicidal after helping a patient.

     In an interview with Frederic Dannen, which appears in the book Hong Kong Babylon, Cheung commented on why he left his singing career to pursue acting full time. “It’s unreasonable for me to work at both singing and acting,” Cheung states. “As an actor, you can go much further- traveling back and forth in time, playing different characters. It’s like having more lives during your lifetime.”