Anthony Wong Chau-sang, known professionally as Anthony Wong, is a Hong Kong actor who is perhaps best known in the West for his roles in the 1992 action film Hard Boiled, the 2002 critically acclaimed Infernal Affairs and as General Yang in the 2008 Hollywood film .
Early life
Anthony Perry was born on 2 September 1961 to a Hong Kong ethnic Chinese mother Wong Juen Yee, her name adopted as part of his current name, Anthony Wong and English-born Frederick William Perry, who served with the RAF during World War II and later as colonial officer. Frederick Perry walked out on the family when Anthony was four, so he lived with his mother "in the staircase of a pre-war building in Wan Chai" until he was sent to live with various relatives for two years while his mother "held down three jobs". In his acting career, Wong's established a reputation for openly critiquing the Hong Kong film industry and its practices, actors' performances and pop culture in interviews and his personal microblog. In some of those critiques, he revealed his experiences of being bullied and discriminated against—for being a "mixed race foreigner" and "during the 1960s, English-Chinese mixed race people like me were regarded as bastards" and for being born outside Hong Kong—while growing up in Hong Kong and during the early years of his acting career. During his late teens, Wong moved to Britain to attend a college of further education. He returned to Hong Kong to attend a training course in hairdressing until he quit to join ATV's training programme when he was 21.
Career
After completing ATV's training programme, he continued his training at The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. He had stated in an interview that his mixed ethnicity initially caused him to be typecast as a villain, due to institutionalised racism in the Hong Kong film industry during this period. He, however, won a Hong Kong Film Award for his performance as a real-life serial killer, who made meat buns from his victims' flesh, in The Untold Story in 1993. In the following years, Wong appeared in a wide range of genre films including Rock n' Roll Cop, Hard Boiled, The Heroic Trio, Infernal Affairs, The Mission and The Medallion. He had also several appearances in the popular Young and Dangerousfilm series as Tai Fei; a rival Triad gangster to Ekin Cheng's character Chan Ho-nam, an ambitious Triad gangster, whom Tai Fei eventually befriends. Wong had also appeared in a number of international English-language films including The Painted Veil and . In 1995, Wong made his directorial debut with The New Tenant. In 2014, Wong made his culinary debut in Dinner Confidential, where he would prepare one dish out of a table d'hote candle-lit dinner menu for guests. In 2015, Wong became the first Hong Kong actor to have won the best lead actor role award in TV and movies when he won 2015 TVB Anniversary Awards for Best Actor and Best Drama for Lord of Shanghai, marking his triumphant return to TVB. He also became the first Hong Kong actor to have won Best Actor awards in films, stage theatre and TV. He also became the first Hong Kong actor to ever win TVB's Best Actor award on his first nomination.
Personal life
Wong married Jane Ng Wai Zing in 1996 and they have two sons, Wong Yat Yat and Ulysses Wong. Wong is taking care of his mother who now has dementia, while his sons now live outside of Hong Kong. In June 2018, it was revealed that he had a son named William, with a woman known only as "Joyce" who was the niece of veteran actor and producer John Shum. In March 2018, Wong reunited with his half-brothers, twins John William and David Frederick Perry, after a BBC story on Wong's search for his family was published. His father died in 1988 in Australia, where he and his first family settled after they left Hong Kong. In a 2005 interview with Star eCentral, Wong stated that amongst his prolific output during the 1980s and the 1990s, a considerable number of films he appeared in were poor and exploitative. He, however, has no regrets because he needed the money to support his wife, their sons and his mother. Wong is a supporter of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, a series of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. This has reportedly led to limited acting opportunities for him in mainland China. He has also voiced support for the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests.
