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.

Born in British Hong Kong, Cheung spent long stretches of his childhood studying in the UK, returning to Hong Kong in his early 20s. In 1977, he rose to prominence as a contestant in the television show Asian Singing Contest (1977–1979), which he parlayed into a career in music. His star rose higher with his 1984 hit single “Monica”. By the mid-1980s, Cheung had become a teen heartthrob and Hong Kong pop icon, receiving numerous music awards including Most Popular Male Artist Awards at the 1988 and 1989 Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards.

Cheung also appeared in scores of Hong Kong films, giving many critically acclaimed performances. He won the 1991 Hong Kong Film Award for his role in Days of Being Wild (1990) and the 1994 Hong Kong Film Critics Society Award for Ashes of Time (1994). He also won the 1994 Japan Film Critics Society Award for best actor for Farewell My Concubine (1993), along with ten other actor nominations, five Golden Horse Awards, three Cannes Film Festival Awards, an Asia Pacific Film Festival Award, and a Venice Film Festival Award. Over the course of his film career, he appeared in 60 movies.

Cheung often portrayed queer and flamboyant characters in films such Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together (1997), and Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine. He was also known for his androgynous style in his live performances, including his now-iconic red sequin high heels.

Cheung’s music and films not only captivated audiences in Hong Kong but also other Asian countries including Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Mainland China, Japan, and South Korea. To this day, no foreign artist has held as many concerts in Japan as he did (16). He also holds the record for the best-selling C-pop artist in South Korea.

Despite his fantastic success, Cheung suffered from depression, and shockingly ended his life by jumping out of a 24th-floor hotel window in 2003 when he was just 46. In death, as in life, Cheung did nothing in half measures.

In 2005, he was ranked at the top of the list for the most popular actors in 100 years of Chinese cinema. In 2010, he was voted the third “Most Iconic Musician of All Time” (after Michael Jackson and The Beatles) by CNN with more than 100,000 people casting their votes.

Cheung was openly bi. 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.^[1]

In a 2001 interview with Time magazine, he 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.