@Cybertan

@socrates469bc   no wonder he mia

For over a decade, Hong Kong actor Anthony Wong Chau-sang has navigated a career defined by conflict: he is blacklisted by some in his home city and in mainland China for his support of the “umbrella movement” protests in 2014. While many of his peers have faded or pandered to new political realities, Wong has persisted. Despite rumours he had moved to Taiwan – which he denied in a 2023 Post interview, stating “I’ve never left” – his focus remains fixed on Hong Kong, where he stays active in local theatre and collaborates with filmmakers who share or tolerate his sentiments. Anthony Wong at an interview with the Post in 2001. Photo: Martin Chan   Wong is no stranger to forging a path amid adversity. Born Anthony William Perry in 1961 to an English father and a Cantonese mother, his childhood turned difficult at age four, when his father abandoned him and his mother for his primary family in the UK.   According to the British news outlet BBC, Perry’s UK family was oblivious to his second family in Hong Kong until Wong publicly searched for him in 2018, only to discover Perry had died decades earlier in 1988. Following his father’s abandonment, Wong’s upbringing was defined by poverty; he and his mother, who earned a meagre living singing Cantonese opera, “lived in the staircase of a pre-war building in Wan Chai”, he told HK Magazine in 2005. Anthony Wong, pictured alongside Anita Yuen Wing-yee, won his first best actor prize at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 1994. Photo: Martin Chan   Compounding their financial struggles, Wong felt “trapped in between” two ethnicities. He attended Chinese-language schools where he was ostracised as a gwei jai – Cantonese for “foreign boy”. “I had nobody when I was young,” he reflected in an interview with the Post in 2002. “I had no friends, no good teachers, nothing except a good mother – maybe because I’m an Eurasian and in those days mixed-blood kids were seen as aliens by both local Chinese and Westerners.” He developed behavioural and attention issues, bounced between primary schools and was held back for several years before landing at a special needs institution in Sham Shui Po. “I was not good at studying at all. When I finished primary school, I was already 15,” he said. “Then I did a bit of secondary school to fill the time until I was 16 and could work legally.” Anthony Wong in a still from The Untold Story (1993).   After working a series of odd jobs in his late adolescence, Wong joined the first artiste training class at free-to-air broadcaster ATV when he was 21, landing a three-year contract. This kick-started his acting career, though he was typecast in smaller “foreigner” roles, often as a villain, because of his appearance. After his ATV contract ended, he starred in his first film, My Name Ain’t Suzie (1985), which inspired him to hone his skills at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) between 1985 and 1988. Wong signed with another broadcaster, TVB, in 1986, which brought him his first lead television roles. His transition to film was marked by low-budget productions. “Some scripts were terrible,” he said. “But I had no choice. I had to do it for the sake of my family.” Despite his critical nature and frequent participation in Category III, or adults-only, films in those early days, his talent shone through. In 1991, he starred as a sex demon in the steamy Erotic Ghost Story 2, which became a massive box office hit. Anthony Wong performs to cheer up hundreds of youths taking part in a 30-hour fast at the Hong Kong Stadium in 1996. Photo: SCMP   In 1993, Wong played a cold-blooded serial killer who turned human flesh into char siu bao – barbecued pork buns – in Herman Yau Lai-to’s The Untold Story. The gruesome horror, long considered a cult classic by genre fans worldwide, earned Wong his first best actor prize at the Hong Kong Film Awards.   As his acting career picked up, Wong developed another artistic endeavour to express his views on society. In 1995, he released his mostly self-penned debut hard-rock album Have a Nice Day, F*** Someone. He released two more records – Underdog Rock (1996) and Bad Taste … But I Smell Good (2002). Similar to his debut, both are filled with opinionated lyrics and loud, passionate sounds that garnered respect in Hong Kong’s underground music scene – much like Wong himself. His film career continued to enjoy significantly more commercial success than his alternative music projects. (From left) Sam Lee, Anthony Wong and Michael Wong in a still from Beast Cops (1998).   After spending six months studying acting in London in 1998, Wong’s efforts paid off. He brought home his second best actor statuette at the Hong Kong Film Awards for the 1998 action thriller Beast Cops, in which he played a temperamental police officer. Marking a new career chapter by moving away from villain roles, Wong then won the Hong Kong Film Awards best supporting actor award for Infernal Affairs (2002) – a role that arguably broke his villain typecast – and again for Initial D (2005), both directed by Andrew Lau Wai-keung and Alan Mak Siu-fai. He also began toying with theatre in the 2000s. In 2013, Wong co-founded Dionysus Contemporary Theatre with experienced producer and HKAPA graduate Joyce Cheung Pui-wah. Perhaps it was just as well. Although he had previously expressed that he was not resistant to China-funded projects, his outspokenness – particularly his pro-democracy views and criticism of the Communist Party – eventually caused him to be, in his words, “shut out” of the industry. Anthony Wong (left) in a still from Infernal Affairs (2002). Photo: Media Asia   “I can see the influence from mainland China increasingly,” Wong told the Post in 2017. “It makes me feel like I should shut up, do my job, grab some money and then go. Every generation has a job to do. If I was in my twenties or thirties, maybe I would do something more. “But now I’m too heavy to run, to fight, even to think. I did my best,” he added. Around this time, he returned to TVB after over a decade for the 2015 period drama series Lord of Shanghai, which earned him the TVB Anniversary Award for best actor. To date, it remains his last major TVB project. Wong’s low-key personal life reflects similar complexities. He married his teenage sweetheart, Jane Ng Wai-zing, in 1992, but the two have largely lived separately, maintaining an on-again, off-again relationship. Anthony Wong in a still from Still Human (2018). Photo: Golden Scene   While Ng gave birth to their two sons in 1996 and 1998, the couple almost divorced in 1998. In the same year, Wong fathered a son with another woman. In 2020, Ng and Wong began living together again. In the past decade, Wong has become less prolific in Hong Kong’s film business, while remaining active in local theatre and staging, on average, one play per year with Dionysus Contemporary Theatre. Still, he won best actor for the third time at the Hong Kong Film Awards for Oliver Chan Siu-kuen’s Still Human (2018). The heartfelt drama gathered several more accolades internationally, in what Wong called “a miracle time in my life”. In a Post interview from 2019, he mentioned being fearful of being persecuted for his political views and had been asked by his relatives to “shut up”, but he did not regret speaking out.   Anthony Wong at an interview with the Post in October 2025. Photo: Edmond So   Since then, Wong has kept a low profile and focused mostly on Dionysus Contemporary Theatre, which started by adapting Western plays into Cantonese but has evolved to create original projects – carving his own niche, on his own terms. “I don’t know why I enjoy acting so much, maybe I’m hiding away from my life,” Wong summed up his creative drive in 2007. “Maybe there’s a hidden violent side of me, maybe I’m overly imaginative – or maybe I have a split personality.”