Leslie Cheung
Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing was a Hong Kong singer and actor. He is considered "one of the founding fathers of Cantopop" for achieving huge success both in film and music.
Cheung debuted in 1977, and rose to prominence as a teen heartthrob and pop icon of Hong Kong in the 1980s, receiving numerous music awards including Most Popular Male Artist Awards at the 1988 and 1989 Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards. In 1989, Cheung announced his retirement from the music industry as a pop singer. Returning to the music scene after a five-year hiatus, Cheung released his chart-topping comeback album Most Beloved which achieved a huge market success. In 1999, he won the Golden Needle Award for his outstanding achievement as a musician at the RTHK Top 10 Gold Songs Awards, and his 1984 hit song Monica was voted as Hong Kong's "Song of the Century". He was honoured as "Asia's Biggest Superstar" at the 2000 CCTV-MTV Music Honours.
Cheung won the 1991 Hong Kong Film Award and the 1994 Hong Kong Film Critics Society Award for best actor. He had also won the 1994 Japan Film Critics Society Award for best actor for his performance in Farewell My Concubine and ten other best actor nominations, five Golden Horse Awards, three Cannes Film Festival Awards, an Asia Pacific Film Festival Award, and a Venice Film Festival Award.
Cheung's music and films not only captured fans in Hong Kong but also other Asian areas including Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Mainland China, Japan and South Korea. He is the first foreign artist to hold 16 concerts in Japan, a record that has yet to be broken and also a record holder as the best-selling C-pop artist in Korea.
Cheung was ranked in the 100 years of Chinese cinema. In 2010, he was voted the third "Most Iconic Musicians of All Time" by CNN with more than 100,000 people casting their votes. 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 diagnosed with depression and died by suicide on 1 April 2003, after jumping off the 24th floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong.
Early life and education
Cheung was born Cheung Fat-chung 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 Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island. At age 12, he was sent to Norwich School in England. He worked as a bartender at his relatives' restaurant in Southend-on-Sea 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."
Cheung attended the University of Leeds where he studied textile management. He continued university through 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.
Career
Following his participation in talent competitions, Cheung signed with Polydor Records in 1977 and released his first albums, I Like Dreamin and Day Dreamin, recording the full contents of the album in English. The albums flopped as did his first Cantonese-language album, Lover's Arrow, in 1979. During one performance in 1980, Cheung was booed by the crowd and the singer briefly departed from his music career, until signing with Capital Artists in 1982 where he released his breakthrough album, Wind Blows On that year. In 1984, his song "Monica" became the best-selling single in Hong Kong history and made Cheung a music superstar. Cheung would release more successful albums, including For Your Heart Only, Stand Up and Admiration. Cheung left Capital Artists in 1987 and released nine more albums on the Cinepoly label.Cheung donated profits of the 1989 album Salute to the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, which was named the Leslie Cheung Memorial Scholarship after his death.
Cheung's status as one of Hong Kong's biggest artists brought him in competition with fellow superstar Alan Tam, leading to increasing hostility between their fans, starting a long-standing conflict that soon put heavy pressure on both singers. In 1988, 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 at Hong Kong Coliseum.
The turning point in Cheung's acting career came in 1986 with his starring role in John Woo's A Better Tomorrow, which broke Hong Kong's box office record. In the following years Cheung was praised for his performances in films which found popularity with audiences worldwide, including A Chinese Ghost Story, Rouge and Wong Kar-Wai's Days of Being Wild.
Although Cheung quit his career as a pop singer from 1989 to 1995, he continued his music career as a songwriter. 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 film The Bride with White Hair. In 1995, he wrote all three theme songs for the film The Phantom Lover. As for songwriting, 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.
In 2001 Cheung collaborated with William Chang, the art director of Wong Kar-Wai's Days of Being Wild, to make his music video Bewildered, about the intimacy between two gay men. Japanese ballet dancer Nishijima Kazuhiro played Cheung's lover in the video. The music video was demonized for advocating homosexuality and was banned by TVB, but Cheung refused to edit the scenes and censor himself.
Cheung's last concert tour was the Passion Tour, which took place in Hong Kong and overseas from 2000 to 2001. Cheung collaborated with fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier, transforming Cheung "From Angel to Devil" in four costumes: the Angel, the Pretty Boy, the Latin Lover, and the Devil – denoting cross-cultural drag and focusing on Cheung's androgyny and bisexuality. Although Passion Tour was acclaimed in Japan, Korea, and Canada for Cheung's glamour and dignity in using drag performance through Gaultier's costume designs, in Hong Kong it was received with disapproval.
In 2011, CCTV commented the "Passion Tour" that from performance form, art concept, costume props and audience response, all represent the highest standard of Chinese concerts, no one has ever surpassed.
Personal life
In 1977, during the filming the RTV television series Love Story, the then 20-year-old Cheung met and fallen in love with his 17-year-old co-star, Teresa Mo, and they got along after they finished the series. In 1979, Cheung proposed to Mo with flowers in marriage. But his sudden proposal startled Mo and she began to distance herself from him. Although Cheung and Teresa Mo eventually broke up shortly after the proposal and briefly lost contact, they later remained close friends again when they reunited for the 1992 film All's Well, Ends Well.Cheung later went into a brief relationship with an actress, the younger sister of Michelle Yim, but they broke up in 1980, due to their incompatibly for each other's lifestyles.
Cheung and Ngai Sze-pui, a Hong Kong model and actress whom he met on the set of ATV television series Agency 24, were in a relationship for two years from 1981 to 1983.
In 1984, at the house of Albert Yeung, Cheung met Cindy Yeung, the youngest daughter of Albert Yeung who had recently returned from Boston. Cindy Yeung was also a fan of Cheung and was seven years younger than him. Cheung and Yeung went out on several dates until the latter returned to Boston. They continued their relationship through phone calls and letters, but would later part ways on the following year but still remained good friends. Cheung felt that if he was not in showbiz, he may have already been married with children like most of his friends.
In an interview in 1992, Cheung stated that "My mind is bisexual. It's easy for me to love a woman. It's also easy for me to love a man, too" and "I believe that a good actor would be androgynous, and ever changing."
He announced his same-sex relationship with his childhood friend Daffy Tong Hok-tak during a concert in 1997, earning him prestige in LGBT communities in China, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. His relationship with Daffy lasted for almost 20 years until his death in 2003.
Cheung responded to questions regarding his love life: "In terms of lovers, I think I can be a better friend than a lover. Because I am a workaholic. To share my romance, that person has to compromise something." This statement was out during the interview following the release of the film Okinawa Rendez-vous in 2000.
In a 2001 interview with Time magazine, Cheung said: "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 to marry me."
Citizenship
He moved to Vancouver in 1990 and became a Canadian citizen by naturalization.Charity work
Cheung was a supporter of several charities concerning children's welfare. He was a patron of the Children's Cancer Foundation, a charity that cares for young children with cancer and their families. Cheung donated HK$1 million in 1996 and launched five sets of RED cards to help raise funds for the Children's Cancer Foundation.He was the first Cantopop star to launch a charity fundraiser at a concert. In 1996, although he rarely sang in public at that time, he sang three theme songs from his films to raise money for the elderly.
For his 1997 concert at the HK Coliseum, Cheung set up a collection booth for the RED Card charity. Donations of HK$100 or above could obtain a set of cards. Cheung said, "I will lead the way, so I donated HK$1,000,000 to Hong Kong children's cancer fund in my own name." The concert raised more than HK$800,000, to which Cheung and his friends added more than HK$100,000, and made up a million Hong Kong dollars to donate to the cancer fund.
He was also a patron of the End Child Sexual Abuse Foundation, founded by veteran actress Josephine Siao.
In 1999, at a party to raise relief funds in the aftermath of the Taiwan earthquake, Cheung participated in a fried rice tasting event. He donated HK$250,000 for a bowl of rice; this was matched by fan donations, bringing the total to HK$500,000.
In 2000, Sun Entertainment opened the "Star Second-hand Shop", where second-hand goods donated by celebrities were auctioned to raise money for the "Sun Love Fund". Leslie Cheung was known for his very good taste, and he was the first to donate three well-loved, carefully selected pieces to the auction. Leslie also donated his beloved badminton racket to IDclub Taiwan, to be auctioned to raise money for the children's cancer fund.
In 1999 and 2000, he appeared in TVB charity shows to help raise funds for ECSAF, in which he was appointed a goodwill ambassador in 2002.
In 2003, Cheung donated HK$100,000 to the Seedling protection fund, who were holding a large-scale charity night on the 12th of March. He told his party guests to give him cash instead of presents, then he donated all of the money that he received to the fund.
Death and legacy
Cheung died of suicide on 1 April 2003 at 6:43 pm. He leapt 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 partner Daffy Tong confirmed that Cheung suffered from clinical depression and had been seeing Professor Felice Lieh Mak, a famous therapist, for treatment for almost a year. He also revealed that Cheung had previously attempted suicide in November 2002. Later at his funeral, Cheung's niece disclosed that her uncle had severe clinical depression and suffered much over the past year. He is buried in Po Fook Hill, Shatin.
Despite the risk of infection from SARS and the WHO's warning on traveling 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 held on 8 April 2003. For almost a 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, was released three months after his death.
Cheung's suicide note :
In a 2012 interview, Cheung's eldest sister, Ophelia, stated Cheung was diagnosed with clinical depression caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. She said that reporters were frequently found outside of her brother's home which hampered his ability to get to his doctor's facility. Thus, he would come over to her house to consult with his 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 for his depression.
In 2013, Cheung's former music agent Florence Chan organised two memorial concerts entitled Miss You Much Leslie on 31 March and 1 April for the 10th anniversary of Cheung's death. Big names of the Hong Kong entertainment industry performed at the concert at Hong Kong Coliseum. In addition, in 2013, Cheung's fans from around the world made two million orizuru cranes for the Guinness World Record as a tribute to the anniversary.
On 12 September 2016, on what would have been Cheung's 60th birthday, over one thousand fans joined Florence Chan in the morning at Po Fook Hill Ancestral Hall for prayers. At night, Cheung's fans club, Red Mission organised "Leslie Cheung 60th Red Hot Birthday Party" to commemorate Cheung. It was an outdoor birthday party at Central Harbourfront Event Space with a big LED screen projecting Cheung's past video clips, concerts, songs and pictures. Eason Chan as a member of Red Mission joined the party singing one of Cheung's song "4 season" as a tribute to Cheung. In the same month, another fans club, United Leslie also celebrated the big day of this renowned star. United Leslie organised an exhibition and movie screening of Cheung's two selected movies in PMQ, Central of Hong Kong.