Chow Yun-Fat

Chow Yun Fat, man, this guy’s a legend. Born in ’55 on Lamma Island—back when Hong Kong was still British and people were just scraping by—he grew up the son of a cleaning lady and a tanker worker. Not exactly glamour, right? When his family moved to the city around ’65, Chow was just a kid, but by the early ‘70s, he’d found himself lining up for TV auditions. TVB picked him up, and with that killer smile and laid-back vibe, he wound up a TV heartthrob. Not too shabby, but nothing iconic… until he hit the big leagues as Hui Man-Keung in “Shang Hai Tan” in 1980—overnight sensation, white suit and all. Then boom—mid-80s, Chow’s racking up awards: Golden Horse in Taiwan, a Best Actor nod at the Asian Pacific Film Fest. That caught the eye of John Woo, who tossed him into “A Better Tomorrow” in ’86. Now, if you were a young dude in Hong Kong back then, you probably owned a “Mark Coat”—hot, heavy, and totally impractical for that steamy weather, but hey, everyone wanted to be Chow. He basically became the face of HK action alongside legends like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. The Woo-Chow partnership just blew up—“The Killer,” “Hard Boiled,” “A Better Tomorrow II”—pure high-octane stuff, bullets flying everywhere. Hollywood couldn’t resist, so Chow jumped the pond for “The Replacement Killers,” “The Corruptor,” and switched it up with “Anna and the King.” Then he circled back to Asian cinema, nailing it with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” The dude’s got range—goofy, romantic, stone-cold killer, you name it. No wonder he’s still in demand worldwide.