{"id":945278,"date":"2026-07-19T10:58:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T10:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/945278\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T10:58:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T10:58:23","slug":"profile-how-hong-kong-actress-maggie-cheung-went-from-commercial-film-eye-candy-to-art-house-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/945278\/","title":{"rendered":"Profile | How Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung went from commercial film eye candy to art-house legend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Between 1984 and 2010, Hong Kong superstar Maggie Cheung Man-yuk<\/a> appeared in 79 films \u2013 though, by her own admission, she disliked many of them. She often felt at odds with the city\u2019s commercially driven cinema industry, yearning instead for serious art-house projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have nothing against commercial films, but if you\u2019re in a movie [and] you feel the script and everything else about it has no meaning \u2013 it\u2019s just another production that the boss can add to his list \u2013 I don\u2019t think you should do it,\u201d Cheung told the South China Morning Post in 2001.<\/p>\n

Finding her artistic voiceCheung did find some artistically inclined films to work on in Hong Kong, notably for Wong Kar-wai<\/a>. The 2000 classic In the Mood for Love<\/a> was one of her personal favourites, and she also had a cameo in its loose 2004 sequel, 2046<\/a>.Cheung also starred in Wong\u2019s 1988 debut, As Tears Go By<\/a>, which she said was \u201cthe first [film] in which I can recognise myself as an actress\u201d. She also had a role in Wong\u2019s groundbreaking Days of Being Wild (1990), though she noted it is more of a director\u2019s film than an actor\u2019s \u2013 \u201cthe film is the star,\u201d she said.\"MaggieMaggie Cheung and Andy Lau in a still from As Tears Go By (1988).But Cheung\u2019s most impressive turn came not for Wong, but for Stanley Kwan Kam-pang<\/a>, when she portrayed the ill-fated 1930s Chinese film star Ruan Lingyu in the intelligent 1991 biopic Center Stage<\/a> (also known as Actress). Cheung\u2019s meticulous, well-researched performance won her the Silver Bear for best actress at the Berlin International Film Festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Between 1984 and 2010, Hong Kong superstar Maggie Cheung Man-yuk appeared in 79 films \u2013 though, by her…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":945279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[380665,60196,380685,380666,254393,120427,380671,380684,380667,171,380675,8464,380680,380678,380662,380681,380679,380664,81351,380673,380682,380661,34988,53,380676,380683,380674,58096,380669,380670,380688,380686,380668,380687,380677,380672,67,132,68,380663],"class_list":["post-945278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-380665","tag-actress","tag-ann-hui-on-wah","tag-as-tears-go-by","tag-berlin-international-film-festival","tag-center-stage","tag-cine-east","tag-comrades-almost-a-love-story","tag-days-of-being-wild","tag-entertainment","tag-full-moon-in-new-york","tag-hong-kong","tag-hong-kong-actress","tag-hong-kong-cinema","tag-hong-kong-film","tag-hong-kong-films","tag-hong-kong-movies","tag-in-the-mood-for-love","tag-jackie-chan","tag-kenny-bee","tag-leon-lai-ming","tag-maggie-cheung","tag-miles-wood","tag-movies","tag-new-dragon-gate-inn","tag-peter-chan-ho-sun","tag-police-story","tag-prince-charming","tag-ruan-lingyu","tag-silver-bear","tag-siqin-gaowa","tag-song-of-the-exile","tag-stanley-kwan","tag-sylvia-chang-ai-chia","tag-tsui-hark","tag-tvb","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wong-kar-wai"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=945278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/945278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/945279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=945278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=945278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=945278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}