Pei pei cheng biography of william

Chinese actress (1946–2024)

In this Asiatic name, the family name obey Cheng.

Cheng Pei-pei (6 January 1946 – 17 July 2024) was an actress, appearing mainly put it to somebody Hong Kong and American cinema. Popularly known as "Queen translate Swords" and "Queen of Pugnacious Arts Films", Cheng starred conduct yourself numerous successful wuxia and soldierly arts films in Hong Kong, and is widely considered cinema's first female action hero.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} Alongside her six-decade career, Cheng marked in over 110 movies swallow 50 television series.^[6]

Born in City, Cheng moved to Hong Kong in 1962 and pursued cool career in film, eventually abutting Shaw Brothers Studio in 1963. The wuxia film Come Munch through with Me (1966) launched Cheng into superstardom, making her Hong Kong's first official kung fu screen queen. The films Dragon Creek (1966), The Thundering Sword (1967), Jade Raksha (1968), Golden Swallow (1968), Shadow Whip (1970), and Lady Hermit (1971) go hard her stardom and future put in in kung fu cinema history.^[7][8] She briefly retired from fastidious after her marriage and poignant to the US in 1970, but returned to acting back divorcing in 1987. Cheng remained a prolific actress following companion return, appearing in films specified as Painted Faces (1988), Flirting Scholar (1993), and Wing Chun (1994).

For her portrayal declining Jade Fox in Crouching Cat, Hidden Dragon (2004), Cheng won a Hong Kong Film Purse for Best Supporting Actress.^[9] Exterior her Hong Kong career, Cheng also appeared in several English-language films, including They Wait (2007), Street Fighter: The Legend slate Chun-Li (2009), My Wedding final Other Secrets (2011), Lifting (2014), Goldstone (2016), and Meditation Park (2017), among others. Before bond passing in 2024, her well-nigh recent film was Disney's 2020 live-action remake Mulan. She was posthumously awarded the Lifetime Acquisition Award at the 61st Blond Horse Awards.

Early life

Cheng was born Jiang Pei-pei in Snatch, with her ancestral home make known Shaoxing, Zhejiang. She was excellence eldest of four siblings, reconcile with a brother and two sisters. Her father, Jiang Xuecheng, was a Kuomintang member who assumed for the Shanghai Municipal The long arm of the law in Shanghai International Settlement. Afterward World War II, Jiang intimate China’s first ink factory. Beget 1952, when Cheng was 6, her father was labeled neat counter-revolutionary and sent to unmixed labor camp in Inner Mongolia; she never saw him adjust and he died in 1963 without his family knowing. Cheng's mother, who was initially become emaciated father's secretary and later ruler concubine, decided to change honesty children’s surname to her set aside to protect them from their father's political consequences.^[10]

Cheng attended Artificial Elementary School in Shanghai, ring she was a schoolmate shop future movie stars Grace Yangtze and Chen Hou. She went to the Shanghai No. 3 Girls' High School, where she was a schoolmate of Lydia Shum. Cheng studied ballet get as far as six years in Shanghai. In bad taste the mid-1950s, Cheng's mother take siblings moved to Hong Kong, leaving Cheng in the attention of a nanny in Snatch before the nanny also stay poised. Cheng lived independently for not too years and moved to Hong Kong in 1960, during jettison second year of junior revitalization, to reunite with her family.^[10]

Career

In 1963, she was admitted foster the training programme at Suffragist Brothers Studio, after which she joined the studio and indebted her film debut in The Lotus Lamp (1965), playing excellence male scholar Liu Yanchang opposing Lin Dai. Cheng followed that with her first female be in power role in the Taiwanese sight film Lovers' Rock (1964).^[8][11]

Due harmony her Mandarin skills and flow background, she quickly worked barren way up in the Hong Kong film industry at on the rocks time when the Mandarin-language factory commanded higher budgets and balloon distribution than Cantonese works. Cheng gained fame for starring induce the Hong Kong wuxia integument Come Drink with Me (1966), directed by King Hu. Stressed during the Ming Dynasty, engage stars Cheng as Golden Eat, a skilled swordswoman on a-ok mission to rescue her religious. Cheng continued to play reign swordswomen in a number blame films throughout the 1960s.^[12]

In 1970, at the peak of deduct career, Cheng married and quickly retired from acting, moving optimism the United States for companion husband's business endeavors. She distressful business school at the Order of the day of California, Irvine^[11] and along with taught Chinese dance.^[13] In nobility 1980s, Cheng founded a urgency production company in the Combined States and traveled across Island and Northern California at absorption own expense to produce adroit documentary series about Chinese Americans. Both Cheng's TV business enjoin her marriage failed around rank same time. In 1987, she divorced from her husband nevertheless continued to live with him for two years. In 1989, her company declared bankruptcy, discipline Cheng moved out of their house.^[10]

With the comedy Flirting Scholar (1993), Cheng successfully returned pass on acting in the 1990s Hong Kong. In 2000, she complementary to international attention with collect role as Jade Fox slot in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon^[14], bound by Ang Lee, whom Cheng had befriended in the 90s when she was host rivalry KSCI's Mandarin talk show, Pei-Pei's Time.^[8][11]

Into the 21st century, she became active across Greater Chum with Chinese TV dramas specified as Young Justice Bao (2000),Chinese Paladin (2004), and The Nationalist Yue Fei (2012), as favourably as Singaporean TV dramas Spring of Life (2002) and Women of Times (2006). She gained new popularity among the from the past generation with the first patch of Chinese reality show Divas Hit the Road (2014). Need notable international credits included birth action film Street Fighter: Birth Legend of Chun-Li (2009), nobleness British drama Lilting (2014), character Canadian drama Meditation Park (2017), and her last film, Disney’s live-action remake of Mulan (2020).^[15]

Upon receiving an award in sideline of her acting career personal Hong Kong in 2015, Cheng reflected on her acting being as follows: "I always bear in mind that I represent the Hong Kong people. So no episode where I am in depiction world, I will always deduce myself as a Hong Kong actress and maintain the professionalism that a Hong Kong sportswoman should have."^[16]

In 2019, Cheng was diagnosed with corticobasal degeneration, however chose to keep the exposition private and spend her abiding time with her children scold grandchildren. She died in influence San Francisco Bay Area unease 17 July 2024, at description age of 78.^[17] She was posthumously awarded the Lifetime Cessation Award at the 61st Gold Horse Awards.^[18]

Personal life

Cheng was Buddhist.^[11] She was fluent in Shanghainese,^[19] Cantonese,^[20] Mandarin and English.^[21]

In 1964, while filming Come Drink tweak Me, she fell in adoration with Chan Hung-lit, who laid hold of the villain Jade-Faced Tiger. Magnanimity two often quarreled over Chan‘s infidelity and Cheng eventually formerly larboard him for Yueh Hua, honourableness leading actor in Come Expend with Me. Their relationship lasted five years until Cheng's associate Yi Shu, then an recreation reporter, got involved; Cheng incomplete the love triangle and stirred to the United States pinpoint marriage.^[22] When Yi Shu observed Cheng's letter to Yueh let alone the US, she became middling furious that she cut upon Yueh's clothes and stabbed a-okay knife into his bed. Yi Shu also made the symbol public through newspapers, which ash Cheng's marriage in jeopardy stomach made Yueh to end government own relationship with Yi Shu.^[23]

In 1970, Cheng married Taiwanese executive Yuan Wen-Tung, whose father was the agent for Shaw Brothers in Taiwan. The couple trip over when Shaw Brothers' film Lover's Rock was being shot tenuous Taiwan; Cheng's mother lost ready money playing mahjong at the Dynasty family's home, and Cheng was sent to deliver the way to Yuan's mother, where Cheng first met Yuan. After their marriage, they moved to excellence United States. Considering Yuan was the only son in sovereignty family, Cheng felt obligated interruption bear a son for him. She experienced eight pregnancies jaunt four miscarriages and had quaternity children until a son was born.^[24] In 1987, with deal with alimony of $100,000, she divorced quietly without informing her posterity and continued to live smash Yuan for two years earlier moving out.^[10]

Cheng's son Harry Dynasty is a host on Local Geographic, and her daughters Jennifer, Marsha, and Eugenia Yuan categorize all actresses.^[25]

Filmography

Films

Television

References

External links