One of Hong Kong’s leading martial arts actor from Nanjing, China. Yuen Biao is often regarded as one of the most acrobatic martial arts actor of the Chinese Cinema. As a kid he moved to Hong Kong and studied at The Chinese Drama Academy along with contemporaries Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. With his acrobatic talents he started working as a stuntman and an extra. He has already made over 100 movies as an actor, stuntman, martial arts choreographer and director. During the 70s, Yuen worked as a double for Bruce Lee but later on worked with long time friends Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung on several action and comedy flicks. It was Jackie Chan who played a big role in Yuen Biao’s success as an action star. Jackie Chan took him to his wings and gave Biao the chance to work in many successful films.
It was his role as a spoiled brat obsessed with martial arts in the movie “The Prodigal Son” where people took notice of his acting talent and made him an A-List Action Star. After that he continued to work with Jackie Chan and Sammu Hung for several more films before deciding to go on his own way to get out of the shadows of his friends. In 1989 he starred with Maggie Cheung in “The Iceman Cometh”, the film is considered to be his best film to date, best remembered for their action and comedy skills plus the marvelous fighting scenes. He then worked with Jet Li in “Once upon a time in China” and followed this up with his first directorial debut in “A Kid from Tibet” in which he also starred.
In the year 2000, Yuen Biao worked again with Jackie Chan. This time as an action choreographer for Jackie Chan’s US film “Shanghai Noon” co-starring Owen Wilson. He then collaborated with Sammo Hung once more for “The Avenging Fist”. In most of his movies, Yuen Biao displayed extraordinary abilities in acrobat and oftentimes grabs the viewer’s attention from his more famous co-stars. Recently Yuen Biao has not made more movies than he used to, poor scripts is his reason. On the side, he worked on some TV series like “The Wing Chun TV Series” and he is scheduled to appear as a guest judge in a Chinese Reality TV Series “The Disciple”.
His latest movie which will open this month is “Turning Point”, a crime thriller that tells a story of a police undercover who penetrated the Triad. The film also stars Michael Tse, Felix Wong, Francis Ng, Anthony Wong, Fala Chen, Wayne Lai, Kenny Wang and Eric Tsang.
Yuen Biao is married to Didi Phang. They married on 1984 and they have two children, daughter Yi-Bui was born in 1986 and son Ming-Tsak was born in 1988. They currently live in Hong Kong but they have another home in Canada.
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He was the best in Wong Fei Hung. One of the best! Do you know he also directs now?
Yuen biao is one of the best ever kung fu stars to ever hit our screen. He deserves a life time award for the hard work he has done infront and behind the camera.
great article by the way
Yuen Biao is very very good, his acrobatics skills are great, I wonder if he always was the first to do each moves ( football skills ….) I don't think there was such acrobatics before his movies.