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Profile | Cecilia Cheung: Hong Kong actress, sex scandal victim and Chinese social media star

  • After a stellar career and children with Nicholas Tse, Cheung survived the Edison Chen photo scandal and divorce. Now she has a new audience

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Cecilia Cheung at the 23rd Hong Kong Film Awards in 2004. The actress’ personal life garnered a lot of attention in the 2000s, with tabloids covering scandals and her high-profile romantic life. Photo: SCMP
This is the 28th instalment in a biweekly series profiling major Hong Kong pop culture figures of recent decades.
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One of the most well-known Hong Kong actresses of the 21st century, Cecilia Cheung Pak-chi’s trajectory in show business has taken many unexpected twists since her debut at the age of 18.

The past 26 years have seen Cheung win two Hong Kong Film Awards, dabble in singing, survive various family-, work- and sex-related scandals, take long breaks for motherhood and subsequently become “box office poison”.

And all this was before she shifted her focus to the mainland China market with frequent appearances on reality TV, talk shows and social media platform Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Cheung in 1999. Photo: Oliver Tsang
Cheung in 1999. Photo: Oliver Tsang
The 44-year-old is known to have a complicated family background; she is the mother of three children – two of them fathered by Nicholas Tse Ting-fung, her ex-husband, while her third child’s biological father remains unknown to the public.
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Born on May 24, 1980 to a 19-year-old half-Chinese, half-British mother and a father from Hong Kong who was, for decades, a triad member, Cheung’s childhood was far from ideal.

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