Maggie Cheung
Maggie Cheung (actually: Cheung Man-Yuk, Chinese 張曼玉 , Pinyin Zhāng Mànyù ; born September 20, 1964 in Hong Kong ) is a Chinese actress who is best known for her character roles.
Life
In 1972 she moved to England with her family at the age of eight . She lived in a small town in Kent , where she went to school. She never really felt at home in England, even as the only Asian woman at her school. In addition, she was bored of the rather quiet and rural life in Kent. At the age of 17 she went back to Hong Kong. There she first worked as a photo model and appeared in commercials. In 1983 she took second place in the Miss Hong Kong beauty pageant . It was the starting point for her film career.
Maggie Cheung was married to Olivier Assayas from 1998 to 2001 . From 2007 to 2011 she was in a relationship with the architect Ole Scheeren . She lives in Beijing .
Career
Since 1984 she has appeared in more than 80 films of various genres ( comedy , wuxia , thriller , drama ) and has made up to six films per year. Although she had no formal acting training, she is considered one of the best character actresses in Hong Kong cinema. She won numerous awards at film festivals.
Her first film, Behind the Yellow Line from 1984, didn't particularly impress the critics. She had her breakthrough to film star with her role as friend of Jackie Chan in Police Story from 1985. In the film As Tears Go By (1989) by Wong Kar-Wai she played the role of Ah Ngor, who is in her cousin, the Gangster Wah, in love. In Wong's film Days of Being Wild , her character fell in love with the heartbreaker Yuddy (Leslie Cheung).
In the 1990s, Maggie Cheung also starred in many wuxia films, including The Iceman Cometh (1989), New Dragon Gate Inn (1992), Heroic Trio (1993), Green Snake (1993) and Ashes of Time (1994, also by Wong Kar-Wai). In contrast to Michelle Yeoh , for example , she does not perform stunts and fights herself, but is doubled in most of the action scenes in these films.
Maggie Cheung sees herself more as a character actress. When she was able to choose the roles herself in the second half of the 1990s due to her popularity, she mainly preferred dramas, such as Comrades, Almost a Love Story (1996). In this film, she plays Qiao-Li, an immigrant from the People's Republic of China who falls miserably in love with Xiao-Jun Li (played by Leon Lai), who also emigrated to Hong Kong from the PRC. 1997 Chinese Box covers a similar topic. This film is also a love drama that takes place against the backdrop of the handover of Hong Kong to the PRC in 1997.
In the French film Irma Vep (1996), Maggie Cheung played herself. She is cast in the film plot by the fictional director Rene Vidal to star in a remake of the 1915 silent film series Les Vampires . But it doesn't come to that, because Vidal suffers a nervous breakdown. This film by Olivier Assayas deals with the difficulties of making a film. Many dialogues also deal with the differences between the more “superficial” Hong Kong cinema and the French Nouvelle Vague , which is presented here as old-fashioned and antiquated.
In the following years she only appeared in a few films, for example in the award-winning work by Wong Kar-Wai, In the Mood for Love (2000). The film won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival . In the Mood for Love is set in Hong Kong in the 1960s. Director Wong wanted to transport the audience to a time long past, to the time when he grew up in this city. Maggie Cheung plays Su Li-zhen, who moves into an apartment in the Shanghai community almost at the same time as the newspaper editor Chow Mo-wan. They soon find that their respective spouses are in a relationship with one another. Out of disappointment and feelings of guilt, however, although they feel drawn to one another, they themselves cannot decide to live out their feelings for one another. More important than the plot of the film seems to be the melancholy mood created by Wong Kar-Wai primarily with filmic means and appropriate music.
In the Mood for Love was written without a precise script. The actors were asked to improvise according to the director's instructions. Cheung found this very exhausting. As Wong kept coming up with new scenes and due to other delays, filming spanned more than two years.
In 2002, Cheung played the assassin Flying Snow in the wuxia film Hero . The film is set in the Warring States Period . Other films followed, including Clean (2004), again by Olivier Assayas. In 2004, Maggie Cheung became the first Asian actress to win the Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival for the portrait of a former drug addict rock star who is fighting for custody of his child ; She was also nominated for the French César in the Best Actress category. Her next film, again directed by Kar-Wai, 2046 (2004), was the sequel to In the Mood for Love .
In 2007 Maggie Cheung was named to the competition jury at the 60th Cannes Film Festival .
In 2017 she was accepted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , which awards the Oscars every year.
Awards (selection)
Berlin International Film Festival
- Best Actress, Silver Bear for Center Stage阮玲玉 ( Berlinale 1992 )
Cannes International Film Festival 2004
- Best Actress for Clean
Golden Horse Award from the Golden Horse Film Festival Taipei , Taiwan
- Best Actress, In the Mood for Love花樣 年華 (2000)
- Best Actress, for Comrades, Almost a Love Story甜蜜 蜜 (1996)
- Best Supporting Role, for Red Dust滾滾 紅塵 (1990)
- Best Actress, for Full Moon in New York人 在 紐約 (1989)
- Best Actress, for In the Mood for Love花樣 年華 (2001)
- Best Actress, for The Soong Sisters宋家皇 朝 (1998)
- Best Actress, for Comrades, Almost a Love Story甜蜜 蜜 (1996)
- Best Actress, for Center Stage阮玲玉 (1993)
- Best Actress, for Farewell China愛 在 他鄉 的 季節 (1991)
- Best Actress, for A Fishy Story不 脫 襪 的 人 (1989)
Filmography
HKE = English title of the film in Hong Kong according to IMDb or other sources
* = may not be the official rental title in English
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literature
- Ralph Umard: Film without borders , Lappersdorf 1996
- Stefan Hammond / Mike Wilkins: Sex and Zen and a bullet in the head , Munich 1999 (only film descriptions)
Web links
- Maggie Cheung in theInternet Movie Database(English)
Individual evidence
- ^ "East-West Attraction," The Star, October 30, 2007
- ↑ "Class of 2017". Accessed June 30, 2017. http://www.app.oscars.org/class2017/ .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cheung, Maggie |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Maggie Cheung Man-yuk, 張 曼玉 |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | chinese film actress |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 20th September 1964 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hong Kong , People's Republic of China |