Chow Yun-Fat
Chow Yun-Fat SBS (traditional Chinese: 周潤發; simplified Chinese: 周润发; pinyin: Zhōu Rùnfā; Cantonese Yale: Jàu Yeuhn Faat; born May 18, 1955) is a Hong Kong Film Award-winning actor. He is best known in Asia for his collaboration with filmmaker John Woo in heroic bloodshed genre films A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard-Boiled; and to the West for his role as Li Mu-bai in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He mainly plays in dramatic films and has won three Hong Kong Film Awards for “Best Actor” and two Golden Horse Awards for “Best Actor” in Taiwan.
It did not take long for Chow to become a household name in Hong Kong following his role in the hit series The Bund in 1980. The Bund, about the rise and fall of a 
gangster in 1930s Shanghai, made him a star. It was one of the most popular TV series ever made in Hong Kong and was a hit throughout Asia.
Although Chow continued his TV success, his goal was to become a big screen actor. His occasional ventures onto the big screens with low-budget films, however, were disastrous. Success finally came when he teamed up with director John Woo in the 1986 gangster action-melodrama A Better Tomorrow, which swept the box offices in Asia and established Chow and Woo as megastars. A Better Tomorrow won him his first Best Actor award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. It was the highest grossing film in Hong Kong history at the time, and it set the standard for Hong Kong gangster films to come. Taking the opportunity, Chow quit TV entirely. With his new image from A Better Tomorrow, he made 
many more ‘gun fu’ or ‘heroic bloodshed’ films, such as A Better Tomorrow 2 (1987), Prison on Fire, Prison on Fire II, The Killer (1989), A Better Tomorrow 3 (1990), Hard Boiled (1992) and City on Fire an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
Chow was married twice; first to Candice Yu (Chinese: 余安安; pinyin: Yú Ānan) in 1983, who was an actress from Asia Television Limited. The marriage lasted nine months. In 1986, Chow married Singaporean Jasmine Tan (simplified Chinese: 陈萫莲; traditional Chinese: 陳薈蓮; pinyin: Chén huilián). Currently, they have no children, although Chow has a goddaughter, Celine Ng, a former child model for Chickeeduck and other companies. Chow has acknowledged having cosmetic surgery on his eyelids in 1989 to reverse a drooping effect.
