Stephen Chow is a Chinese actor, comedian, director, screenwriter, producer, stage director and politician. Best known outside the homeland thanks to the comedic action movies "Slaughter Football" and "Kung Fu-style Showdown." In recent years, he shot blockbusters Journey to the West and Mermaid, which set box office records for Chinese films.
Childhood and youth
Stephen Chow was born on June 22, 1962 in Hong Kong. Parents divorced when he was only seven. Stephen and his two sisters were raised by his mother. At the age of nine, the future actor saw Bruce Lee's Big Boss film and decided to study martial arts. However, the family could not afford to pay for a special school, so Chow studied kung fu on his own, from various television shows and films.
After studying at several missionary Christian schools, Stephen Chow enrolled in acting classes at one of Hong Kong’s two largest television companies.
Carier start
In 1982, after completing acting classes, Chow began working on television, appearing in small roles. Soon, his first success came to him when he became the host of a popular children's program.
In 1987, the first full-length film with Stephen Chow in one of the roles was released. For the action movie "Final Justice", he received the prestigious Taiwanese Golden Horse Award in the category "Best Supporting Actor."
In the next few years, the young actor starred in several successful comedies, his film "Resistance at School" and did become the highest grossing in the history of Hong Kong box office. In 1994, Stephen Chow directed the spy comedy "From Beijing With Love", where he also played a major role. The film proved to be excellent at the box office, and in the next few years, Stephen directed several more comedic fighters with himself in a central role.
"Lethal football"
In 2001, Steven Chow released a new project, the sports comedy "Slaughter Football." The picture tells about the former Shaolin monks who decide to apply their incredible skills in order to win football competitions.
The film grossed over sixty million dollars at the box office in Hong Kong, becoming the highest grossing film in the history of the region. Hire in China was banned due to bureaucratic difficulties. Nevertheless, the film received international success and earned rave reviews from critics. Also, the film received awards for "Best Film" and "Best Director" at the annual Hong Kong Film Awards.
"Kung Fu Style Showdown"
The next project by Stephen Chow after the international success of "Shaolin Football" was developed in collaboration with the world famous company Columbia Pictures. This allowed the director’s gang comedy to go on wide American distribution and raise more than seventeen million dollars. This made the picture the highest grossing foreign film of 2005 in the United States. In addition, Kung Fu Style Showdown has raised over eighty million dollars in the rest of the world and has received many prestigious awards.
The picture still ranks tenth in the ranking of the highest grossing foreign films in the history of American distribution. Also on many lists of the best action movies of all time. The success of the comedy was so great that several video games and mobile applications based on the picture were launched.
Box office records
After the success of “Kung Fu Showdown,” Stephen Chow worked on a sequel to a woman in the center of the story for a while, but his next directorial project was the science fiction project CJ7. The film became the least profitable in the career of the director and received mixed reviews from critics.
In 2013, Steven Chow's fantasy film, Journey to the West: Demon Conquest, based on a classic Chinese novel, was released. From the very beginning of the rental, the picture began to break records, showing the best fees on the day of the premiere in the history of Chinese rental. As a result, the film raised more than two hundred million dollars in the Middle Kingdom and about ten more in other countries. Thus, "Journey to the West: Subjugation of the Demons" became the most lucrative painting in Chinese in history.
In the sequel to Journey to the West, Stephen Chow only acted as a producer, losing the director's chair to another director. His next project was the film "Mermaid" - a mixture of fantasy and romantic comedy. For the first time in a long time, Chow did not play the main role in his project, concentrating only on the responsibilities of the director, screenwriter and producer.
“Mermaid” again broke many records of Chinese hire, including indicators for fees for the first day and fees for one day rental. In just a few months, the movie was able to raise more than half a billion dollars in movie theaters, becoming the first film to earn over three billion yen in the box office. Since 2016, several more films have been able to repeat and surpass this indicator, now Mermaid is in fourth place in the ranking of the highest grossing films in the history of Chinese distribution.
A television series based on the blockbuster and the sequel is planned for the coming years, however, the director of the original film will again be limited only to the role of the producer. It is not yet known which project will be the next in the directorial filmography of Stephen Chow.
Ratings and reviews
Stephen's popularity in Hong Kong and China is so huge that many people since the late nineties began to imitate his manner of speech, using expressions that Chow characters used in the conversation. He is one of the most popular people in the Middle Kingdom.
He was also able to achieve international recognition, for example, the legendary director Quentin Tarantino named him his favorite actor in martial arts films. One of the few foreign directors whose films successfully go to the North American box office. At the end of 2016, Forbes magazine was ranked ninth in the list of the most profitable directors in the world.
Personal life
The personal life of the actor has always been discussed in the Chinese media. For years, he was considered the main bachelor of the country. For ten years, he met with a girl named Yu Weng Feng, but apparently the family of Stephen Chow did not even begin to think. In an interview, he claimed to be too old to marry.
After breaking up with Wang Fang, he began dating model Kama Lo, who is over twenty years younger than the actor. Some time after the beginning of their relationship in the media, rumors appeared about the couple’s engagement, and then there was information that the actor had secretly married Luo. The Chinese tabloids could not get confirmation from Stephen Chow and his wife or just a girl.