Tsui Hark FAQs: Hong Kong movie director, producer and screenwriter’s career highs and lows, and how he fell out with John Woo

He didn’t discover Jet Li or Brigitte Lin, but he made them martial arts movie stars; and it was Tsui who urged John Woo to make breakout film A Better Tomorrow

As a director, Tsui made memorable films including Once Upon a Time in China, and shook up martial arts filmmaking, but some of his early movies were comedies

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Hong Kong film director, producer and screenwriter Tsui Hark in an interview with the Post in 2008. He was a powerhouse behind the Hong Kong cinema boom of the 1990s, and made martial arts movie stars of Jet Li and Brigitte Lin, as well as helping John Woo’s career take off. Photo: SCMP

Published: 10:15am, 11 Jun 2023

Innovative, energetic, and incredibly hard-working, Tsui Hark was a powerhouse behind the Hong Kong cinema boom of the early 1990s.

As producer, director and screenwriter, he helped John Woo Yu-sum, Jet Li Lianjie and Brigitte Lin Ching-hsia become superstars, and set the standard for Hong Kong filmmakers.

We answer some frequently asked questions about the legendary director behind such classics as Peking Opera Blues and Once Upon a Time in China.

Was Tsui born in Hong Kong?

No, Tsui was born in Guangzhou, in southern China, and was brought up in what was then Saigon in Vietnam. He came to Hong Kong when he was 14 for his schooling, and later went to the United States to study at the University of Austin in Texas.

(From left) Brigitte Lin, Cherie Chung and Sally Yeh in a still from Tsui’s 1986 film “Peking Opera Blues”.

His father, a pharmacist, wanted him to become a doctor, but he didn’t want to follow that path. “I didn’t know what to study, so I chose film,” he told City Entertainment.