Maggie Cheung

Lore & Background

Maggie Cheung was born in Hong Kong to Shanghainese parents. She attended St. Paul's Primary Catholic School in Happy Valley and emigrated with her family to the United Kingdom at age eight, spending part of her childhood and adolescence in Bromley, London, and attending St Edmund's School, Canterbury. She returned to Hong Kong at 18 in 1982, working briefly as a salesperson at Lane Crawford before entering the Miss Hong Kong pageant in 1983, where she won first runner-up and Miss Photogenic. She was also a semi-finalist in the Miss World pageant that year. After two years as a TV presenter, she signed a contract with TVB.

Cheung first rose to prominence in the 1980s through her collaboration with Jackie Chan in the Police Story film series. She quickly expanded from commercial action and comedy to dramatic roles, appearing in films such as As Tears Go By (1988), Days of Being Wild (1990), Irma Vep and Comrades, Almost a Love Story (both 1996). Her international breakthrough came with Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (2000), which gained her worldwide fame and ranked fifth on Sight & Sound magazine's 2022 list of the top 100 films. Since the late 2000s, Cheung has largely stepped back from acting, making only occasional public appearances and serving as a UNICEF ambassador.

Reader's Guide

Maggie Cheung's significance lies in her record-breaking achievements in Asian cinema and her historic wins at major European film festivals. She is the only Asian actress to have won Best Actress awards at two of the three major European film festivals—the Berlin International Film Festival for Center Stage (1991) and the Cannes Film Festival for Clean (2004). Her performance in In the Mood for Love was listed by Entertainment Weekly as one of the '51 classic performances overlooked by the Oscars' in the 86-year history of the Oscars, one of only two Asian performances on that list. Cheung's career trajectory from commercial action films to critically acclaimed dramatic roles, and her ability to perform fluently in multiple languages (Cantonese, Mandarin, Shanghainese, English, French), demonstrated her versatility. Her reduced work after the late 2000s and her role as a UNICEF ambassador further underscore her selective engagement with the public sphere. Her legacy is cemented by her multiple Hong Kong Film Awards and Golden Horse Awards, as well as her inclusion in retrospectives such as the Nantes Three Continents Film Festival's tribute.

Did You Know?

• Cheung won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival for Center Stage (1991), becoming the first Chinese performer to win that award.
• She is the first Asian actress to win the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival, for Clean (2004).
• Cheung's performance in In the Mood for Love was listed by Entertainment Weekly as one of the '51 classic performances overlooked by the Oscars'.
• She is a polyglot, performing fluently in Cantonese, Mandarin, Shanghainese, English, and French in her films.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"If a film does well, other people want to work with you." — Maggie Cheung "Many people have the misconception that a pretty girl can only be a ‘vase’ in a film. I want people to consider me not just to be a film star, but someone who knows about acting." — Maggie Cheung "I have done all kinds of scripts, but I prefer working on dramas. They give me room to really act. Comedies are fun to work on, but I don’t get much satisfaction from them." — Maggie Cheung "Comedies are written for men, and the women just stand around. But I do like the audience reaction to comedies. When they laugh, I feel good. You don’t get that sort of pleasure from making dramas." — Maggie Cheung