Moon Lee

Biography

From age 6 to 12, Lee lived in Kaohsiung, Taiwan with her father, who had business there. She attended Youchang Elementary School. During her stay in Taiwan, she learned Mandarin Chinese and developed her piano and dancing expertise. As a result, she often had performances.

When Lee first returned to Hong Kong to attend middle school, her Cantonese was not perfect and she was sort of rustic. At age 15, Lee was accidentally discovered by a television director, Siu Hin-fai [zh], during a school dancing performance. She was recommended to play a role in a television series Fatherland. Since the series did not require too much of her time and she could still study at school, her parents agreed to let her act. In the series, she was a country girl by the name of A Mun, who looked just like Lee. Ever since then, people liked to call her A Mun. Her performance in the series was so impressive that she began her career as an actress. Since she has been practicing dances from her childhood, it was easy for her to perform action movies with her agile and flexible movements. After her first martial arts movie in ancient costumes (Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain), she has not left the stage of action movies.

At 18, after graduating from high school, Lee signed contracts with both Asia Television and Golden Harvest. When she was sent to Japan to make an advertisement for Mitsubishi, the company asked her to pick an English name, and she chose "Moon" as the pronunciation of Mun in Cantonese is close to the English word, Moon.

She played in many television series, exceeding 400 episodes. Subsequently, she focused her efforts wholly on movies, mostly action movies. In the late 1990s, she gradually left the movie field and was passionately involved in the promotion of the art of dance and established a dancing school to cultivate talented dancers. Her students won excellence awards in Hong Kong dance competitions.

Early life

Liu was born Sin Kam-hei in Guangdong Province, China on August 22, 1955, prior to his adoption into another family.[1] He is often wrongly cited as being the adopted son of Lau Cham, and adoptive brother of directors and actors Lau Kar-leung (Liu Chia-liang) and Lau Kar-wing (Liu Chia-Yung). He was not adopted by the family but is Lau Cham's godson.[2]

In his youth (ages 15–20), he skipped school to train in Chinese martial arts without his parents' knowledge. He trained at Lau Cham's martial arts school of Hung Gar discipline, which descended from Wong Fei-hung's grand student (father to Lau Kar Leung). Lau Cham's wife assisted in his training and due to the friendship and respect Liu felt for Lau and his wife, he took on the name Lau Ka-fai. As he grew up, he found a job as a shipping clerk to make ends meet. His interests had always been towards martial arts and he was eventually offered a role by Lau Kar-leung.

Career

Liu's first break was with Chang's Film Company (a Shaw Brothers subsidiary operating in Taiwan) acting small parts for such films as 5 Shaolin Masters, Shaolin Martial Arts, and 4 Assassins. He starred in Challenge of the Masters (1976), as the folk hero Wong Fei Hung, and was featured in Executioners From Shaolin (1977) before starring in his signature role as Shaolin hero San Te in The 36th Chamber of Shaolin.

The tale of the imperialistic struggle, while not a new one, was significant for the intense focus placed on the inner workings of Shaolin Temple itself. San Te, Liu's character, overcomes the temple's thirty-five chambers as he unwittingly undergoes the rigorous training regimen imposed by the temple's Head Abbott on the pretext of “earning” a right to study martial arts there.

The “zero-to-hero” tale turned Liu into an international icon in spite of a frame far slighter than that of the folk hero himself (known as “Iron Arms” for the muscularity of his physique) and paved the way for a very healthy working schedule into the mid-1990s, even as younger, more agile martial artists eventually emerged. By the late 1980s he had begun accepting smaller roles, such as in Lau Kar-leung's Tiger on the Beat.

Liu has also been active in television, and was contracted to Hong Kong's TVB company for many years, continuing playing roles as a martial arts master. Though still performing some martial arts roles, he is at home as well in comedic, self-deprecatory or emotional characters. His second-most common role in TVB has been playing a Hong Kong Police Force officer[citation needed].

Quentin Tarantino had long been a fan of Liu, and hoped to find him a role in one of his movies. This eventually came to pass with the roles of Johnny Mo and Master Pai Mei in both Kill Bill films. His roles in Kill Bill raised Liu's profile again and a renewed interest was shown by Chinese producers; since Kill Bill, Liu has returned to doing movies while continuing to do television for Hong Kong's TVB station.

In 2008, Liu added a Bollywood film to his profile. Collaborating with Indian actor Akshay Kumar who is a top-billed Bollywood actor and also a martial arts performer in a film titled Chandni Chowk To China (CC2C). He played the role of the villain, Hojo, a smuggler and a well-trained martial artist. Before this, he appeared as himself (along with his mentor Lau Kar Leung) in the 2009 film Dragonland, the first Italian documentary about martial cinema history, by Lorenzo De Luca. Liu attended as special guest star at the premiere in Rome, meeting his Italian fans for the first time. During August 2011, Liu had a stroke and put all his plans on hold to recover. Liu had cancelled all public engagements as of March 2012.