Leslie Cheung

Leslie Cheung Kwok-Wing (12 September 1956 – 1 April 2003) was a Hong Kong musician, singer-songwriter, actor, and music and film producer. Cheung is considered as "one of the founding fathers of Cantopop" by "combining a hugely successful film and music career."

Cheung's music and movies not only captured fans in Hong Kong but also other Asian countries including Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Japan and South Korea. He is the first foreign artist to hold 16 concerts in Japan that has yet to be broken and the record holder as the best-selling C-pop artist in Korea.

Cheung was ranked as the most favourite actor in the 100 years of Chinese cinema. In 2010, he was voted the third "Most Iconic Musicians of All Time" (after Michael Jackson and The Beatles). CNN considered Cheung as the "Most Beautiful Man from Hong Kong Cinema" and one of "Asia's 25 Greatest Actors of All Time."

Cheung was born in Kowloon, Hong Kong, the youngest of ten children in a middle-class Hakka family. Cheung Wut Hoi, his father, was a fairly well known tailor, whose customers included American actors William Holden, Marlon Brando, and Cary Grant. His parents divorced when he was quite young. While in Hong Kong, Cheung attended Rosaryhill School. At age 13, he was sent to England as a boarder at Eccles Hall School. After six month study, he transferred himself to a school in Chelmsford and obtained scholarship. He worked as a bartender at his relatives' restaurant and sang during the weekends. It was around this period that he chose his name, "Leslie." According to Cheung, he chose this name because "I love the film Gone with the Wind. And I like Leslie Howard."

In several interviews, Cheung stated he had had a fairly unhappy childhood. "I didn't have a happy childhood. Arguments, fights and we didn't live together; I was brought up by my granny." "What I would say most affected me as a child, was that my parents were not at home with me. As a young kid, one could not always understand why his parents weren't at home. This made me depressed sometimes."

He attended the University of Leeds where he studied textile management. He dropped out of university at the end of his first year when his father fell ill. After his father's recovery, Cheung did not return to England to complete his studies.

He donated all the proceeds from the sales of Salute to the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (香港演藝學院), which was named the Leslie Cheung Memorial Scholarship after his death.

With the popularity of Cheung and Tam, fans of these two stars became increasingly hostile to each other, starting a long-standing conflict that soon put heavy pressure on both singers. In 1988, Alan Tam publicly quit all pop music award ceremonies. In 1989, Cheung announced his intention to retire from his music career as a singer. Cheung then set a record by being the first singer ever in Cantopop history to hold a retirement concert series (Final Encounter of the Legend), which ran for 33 consecutive nights (he was 33 at the time) at Hong Kong Coliseum. In 1990, he left Hong Kong at the peak of his music career and emigrated to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he reportedly "found peace and tranquility." Cheung became a Canadian citizen in 1992, returning to Asia full-time in 1995 for his re-emergence in Chinese-language popular music.

From 1986 to 1989, Cheung acted in a number of movies that are considered as Hong Kong classics by film critics and Asian movie fans.

Other films in which Cheung appeared during this period include The Bride with White Hair (with Brigitte Lin, 1993), He's a Woman, She's a Man (with Anita Yuen, 1994), The Phantom Lover (1995), and Viva Erotica (with Shu Qi, 1996). His performance in these movies won him three Best Actor Award nominations at the Hong Kong Film Awards and three Best Actor Award nominations at the Golden Horse Film Festival from 1990 to 1998. He acted in many comedies. In 1991, teamed again with Chow Yun-fat and Cherie Chung, Cheung played a skillful and charming thief in John Woo's Once A Thief. In 1992's All's Well, Ends Well, he acted as an effeminate brother who would later realize the meaning of true love. Other well-known comedies included The Eagle Shooting Heroes, It's a Wonderful Life, and The Chinese Feast, where he starred opposite Anita Yuen. Cheung was also a box office attraction in Hong Kong; from 1990 to 1998, 13 out of 39 movies in which he starred were listed as yearly top ten box office movies.

Although Cheung quit his career as a pop singer from 1989 to 1995, he continued his music career as a composer. He composed more than ten songs during that time. In 1993, he won Best Original Movie Song Award from Golden Horse Film Festival for the theme song Red Cheek, White Hair to the movie The Bride with White Hair (as a composer). In 1995, he composed all three theme songs for the film The Phantom Lover. As a composer, Cheung won four nominations for Best Original Movie Song Award at the Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards and two nominations for Best Original Film Song at the Hong Kong Film Awards. In 1998, he was a member of the jury at the 48th Berlin International Film Festival.

In 1995 Cheung signed a contract with Rock Records, returning to music as a singer. At the same year, he released his first post-"retirement" album, Beloved. Beloved achieved large market success with the award of IFPI Best Selling Album,.

Though Cheung had never publicly declared his sexual orientation, he once said in an interview with Time magazine:

"It's more appropriate to say I'm bisexual. I've had girlfriends. When I was 22 or so, I asked my girlfriend Teresa Mo (his colleague at Rediffusion Television (now ATV) of the time) to marry me."

Cheung dated Ngai Sze-Pui (倪詩蓓), a Hong Kong model and actress whom he met on the set of Agency 24 for two years.

Death and legacy

Leslie Cheung leaped from the Mandarin Oriental hotel (right).

Cheung committed suicide on 1 April 2003 at 6:43 pm (HKT). He leaped from the 24th floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel, located in the Central district of Hong Kong Island. He left a suicide note saying that he had been suffering from depression. He was 46 years old.

As one of the most popular performers in Asia, Cheung's death broke the hearts of millions of his fans across Asia, and shocked the Asian entertainment industry and Chinese community worldwide. The day after Cheung's death, his family confirmed that Cheung suffered from clinical depression and had been seeing psychiatrists for treatment for almost a year. They also revealed that Cheung had attempted suicide in 2002. Later at his funeral, Cheung's niece disclosed that her uncle had severe clinical depression and suffered much over the past year (2003).

Despite the risk of infection from SARS and the WHO's warning on travels to Hong Kong, tens of thousands attended Cheung's memorial service, which was held for the public, on 7 April 2003, including celebrities and other fans, many from other parts of the world such as mainland China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, the United States, and Canada. Cheung's funeral was on 8 April 2003. For almost one month, Cheung's death dominated newspaper headlines in Hong Kong and his songs were constantly on the air. His final album, Everything Follows the Wind (一切隨風), was released three months after his death.

Cheung's suicide note (translation):

"Depression! Many thanks to all my friends. Many thanks to Professor Felice Lieh-mak (Cheung's last psychiatrist). This year has been so tough. I can't stand it anymore. Many thanks to Mr. Tong. Many thanks to my family. Many thanks to Sister Fei. In my life I have done nothing bad. Why does it have to be like this?"

In a 2012 interview, Cheung's eldest sister, Ophelia Cheung, stated Cheung was diagnosed with clinical depression caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. She said that reporters were outside of her brother's house, so he was not able to see a doctor. Thus, he would come over to her house to consult the doctor. He would ask his sister, "Why am I depressed? I have money and so many people love me." He was reluctant to take medication.

In 2013, Cheung's former music agent Florence Chan organized two memorial concerts entitled "Miss You Much Leslie" on 31 March and 1 April for the 10th anniversary of Cheung's passing. Big names of the Hong Kong entertainment industry such as Jacky Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, Andy Hui, Leo Ku, Chilam Cheung, Vivian Chow, Kelly Chen, Joey Yung, Grasshoppers, and others performed at the concert at Hong Kong Coliseum. In addition, this year, fans of this late singer-actor around the world made two million origami cranes for the Guinness World Record as tribute to Cheung's 10th year of passing.

Discography

Main article: Leslie Cheung discography

Filmography

Main article: Leslie Cheung filmography

See also

• Cinema of Hong Kong
• Music of Hong Kong

Further reading

• Simon Broughton, Mark Ellingham, World Music Volume 2: Latin and North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific, BBC Radio, 2000, ISBN 1-85828-636-0
• Kei Mori, "夢想之欠片 (Broken pieces of dreams)", Renga Shyobo Shinshya Co Ltd, Tokyo, Japan, 2004, ISBN 4-902603-55-1
• Chitose Shima, "Leslie Cheung Interview", All About Leslie, p25–40, Sangyo Henshu Center Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, 1999, ISBN 4-916199-10-3
• Chitose Shima, Time of Leslie Cheung, Sangyo Henshu Center Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, 2004, ISBN 4-916199-59-6
• City Entertainment Editor Committee, Leslie Cheung's Movie World 2 (1991–1995), City Entertainment, Hong Kong, 2006, ISBN 962-8114-98-0
• De Hui, Leslie Cheung's Movie Life I, II, Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House, Shanghai, 2006, ISBN 7-80678-557-4.

External links

• Leslie Cheung at IMDb