Maggie Cheung

1984–1987: Early work

Shortly after her debut, Maggie Cheung broke into the film industry by starring in the comedy Prince Charming (1984), which became a box office hit. Her standout performance caught the attention of Jackie Chan, who subsequently cast her as May—a long-suffering girlfriend—in the 1985 film Police Story. The movie achieved tremendous success, catapulting Cheung to overnight stardom and cementing her popularity across Asia.^[10][11]

1988–1994: Breakthrough

Despite her success, Cheung found herself typecast in the roles of comics or weak, clumsy women. Realizing this, Cheung wanted to break away by seeking more dramatic roles. She got this opportunity when Wong Kar-wai cast her in As Tears Go By (1988), the first of her many collaborations with Wong.^[10][11]

Cheung often cites the film as the piece that truly began her serious acting career, and she won critical praise for it. In 1989–1990, she won Best Actress awards at the Golden Horse Award and Hong Kong Film Award for her work in Full Moon in New York and A Fishy Story respectively.^[11] Rolling Red Dust won the Golden Horse Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1992, she became the first Chinese performer to win a Best Actress Award at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival for her work in Center Stage（1991）. Cheung made a historic contribution to China in the performance award.^[12] With this film, Maggie Cheung won the Best Actress Award at the Taiwan Golden Horse Film Awards, the Best Actress Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards, and many other awards. Cheung subsequently proved her versatility with roles in action films. Her performance in the sci-fi martial arts smash hit The Heroic Trio (1992) and its sequel, Executioners (1993), impressed both critics and audiences with her martial arts skills.^[10] Also in a departure from her usual roles, Cheung played a beautiful and vicious femme fatale in New Dragon Gate Inn (1992).^[11] In the film Green Snake (1993), she played a snake demon who transformed into a human form. She was both good and evil, yearning for human emotions while feeling confused about them. In Wong Kar-wai's film Ashes of Time (1994), she almost carried the soul of the character with "static performance":^[13] without fierce dramatic conflicts, she conveyed turbulent emotions through eyes, gestures and silence.

1996–2004: International prominence

After having acted in more than 68 movies, most of which were action films, in less than a decade, she decided to take her career in another direction. She took a two-year sabbatical and used the time to reflect upon which kinds of roles interested her. She began getting interested in art and music, she travelled and perfected her language studies.^[14]

Then, she returned to the set, but began to carefully select the co-productions and directors. After taking a break in 1994, Cheung returned to film Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep (1996), which helped her break into the international scene.The film was shortlisted for the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival.^[10] That same year, she won further acclaim for her work in the romantic film Comrades: Almost a Love Story, in which she played one of a pair of lovers kept apart for ten years by fate. With this film, she won the Golden Horse Award in Taiwan, the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Best Actress in the Asia-Pacific Film Festival. The film was selected as a classic unit of Venice Film Festival in 2013.

In 1997, she made her first English-language film in Wayne Wang's Chinese Box (1997). Cast as a mysterious young woman named Jean, Cheung held her own alongside the more internationally well-established stars, Jeremy Irons and Gong Li.^[11] The film was shortlisted for the Venice Film Festival and won the Best Music Award.

After her 1998 marriage to Olivier Assayas, Cheung stayed mainly in France. In the same year, she won the Best Actress Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards for the fourth time for her performance in the film The Soong Sisters (1997). She returned to Hong Kong to film In the Mood for Love (2000), which won critical acclaim and a fourth Taiwanese Golden Horse Award for Best Leading Actress for Cheung. She also won the Best Actress Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards for the fifth time.^[6][10] The film was shortlisted in the main competition unit of Cannes Film Festival, and won the French film César Awards, the German film Laura Award and the Best Foreign Language Film award at the British Academy Film Awards and the David di Donatello Awards, where it also received a Best Foreign Language Film nomination. In 2000, it represented Hong Kong at the Oscar Awards for the Best Foreign Language film.

In 2002, she starred in Hero (2002, a martial arts epic directed by Zhang Yimou. As a landmark commercial blockbuster in the history of Chinese cinema, the film set a new box office record for Chinese-language films^[15] and garnered tremendous international acclaim. It was selected into the main competition section of the 53rd Berlin International Film Festival, nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 60th Golden Globe Awards and the 75th Academy Awards, and ranked first on Time magazine's list of the Top 10 Films of 2004. In the same year, Maggie Cheung graced the cover of Time^[16], and the Nantes Three Continents Film Festival in France held a special retrospective titled "Maggie Cheung: A Unique Hong Kong Actress" to pay tribute to her.^[17]

In 2004, she won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival for her role as a mother who tries to kick her drug habit and reconcile with her long-lost son in Clean (2004).^[18] She is the first Asian actress to win this honor. In 2005, Clean was nominated for the Best Actress Award at the French César Awards.

2005–present: Reduced work and retirement

After 2005, Cheung gradually reduced her film production and turned to music, art and other fields. During this period, she did not star in new feature films, but appeared in public view in the form of guest appearances or attending international activities. Until around 2013, she basically faded out of the film industry and focused on her personal life and cross-border creation.^[19][9]

In 2005, she won the artistic contribution award of the Montreal International Film Festival,^[20] and was selected as one of the "Top 100 Outstanding Actors of China Film in a Hundred Years" in the same year, and was awarded as "National First Class Actor".^[21]

In 2006, for the first time in the history of the 59th Cannes Film Festival (2006), the photographic image of an Asian actress, Cheung in In the Mood for Love, was used in official posters.^[22]

On 7 February 2007, The New York Times rated Cheung as one of the 22 Great Performers in 2006 for her Cannes winning role as Emily in Clean.^[23] In the same year, she won the Outstanding Contribution Award of Chinese in Shanghai International Film Festival.^[24]

After 20 years of making movies, she decided to retire from acting to pursue a career as a film composer. She had mentioned she would like to compose music and paint after having fulfilled her acting potential.^[25] Her last film appearance was as Mazu, Chinese goddess of the sea, in the film Ten Thousand Waves (2010) by British filmmaker and installation artist Isaac Julien.^[26] In the same year, Maggie Cheung served as UNICEF Ambassador to China and devoted herself to helping improve poverty-stricken areas in China.^[27]

In July 2011, she was awarded a doctor honoris causa at the University of Edinburgh.^[28] Cheung retired from acting in 2013 and has since kept a low profile.^[29] In November, at the kind invitation of director Hou Hsiao-hsien, Cheung returned to the ceremony where she won the Best Actress award for the first time as the ambassador of the 50th Golden Horse Award, and has never attended any award ceremony since then.

In April, 2014, the 33rd Hong Kong Film Awards screened the short film Light and Shadow of the Times, which was edited by Cheung. The short film briefly described the development of Hong Kong films, with the background of major historical events in contemporary Hong Kong.^[30]

In 2016, the Academy Film Archives and David Bordwell launched the "Maggie Cheung: Center Stage"^[31] retrospective series. Hailed as a classic icon of Chinese cinema, she has a body of work spanning East and West, blending classical charm with modern transnational elegance, and is internationally recognized as an iconic symbol of contemporary Chinese femininity.^[31] In 2017, she was invited to become a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Oscar).^[32]

On April 17, 2024, just as the "100-day countdown to the Paris Olympic Games" and "the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France", Maggie Cheung was invited by the state to act as the ambassador of the "China-France Badminton Charity Festival" and attend the event together with Juliette Binoche.^[33]

Film

Short film

Television