One of our readers asked why we have never featured Maggie Cheung. She is one of Asia’s most beautiful women according to some. So here we go at last:
Maggie Cheung Man-yuk (born September 20, 1964) is a multi award-winning Chinese actress from Hong Kong. Raised in England, she has over 80 films to her credit since starting her career in 1983.Biography
Maggie Cheung traces her ancestry to Shanghai, China, and then fled from the Communists when the concession was returned to the Communists and moved to Hong Kong a couple of generations ago. Subsequently, her family, merchant-class, emigrated from the Crown Colony of Hong Kong to the United Kingdom. Maggie Cheung spent part of her childhood and adolescence in the United Kingdom. Upon her return to Hong Kong in 1983, at the age of 19 Cheung entered the Miss Hong Kong beauty pageant contest. She won second place. She was a semi-finalist in the Miss World pageant the same year.
Prior to 1988, Maggie’s screen appearance was often limited to eye candy roles. One of Cheung’s notable movie roles then is that of “May”, the girlfriend of police detective “Kevin” Chan Ka Kui in Jackie Chan’s Police Story movies (however, she did not reprise the role in Police Story 4: First Strike or New Police Story). Maggie frequently cited her performance in the movie As Tears Go By (1988), her first of many collaborations with film director Wong Kar-Wai, as the piece that truly began her serious acting career. Maggie Cheung is famous for being a talented multi-lingual actress. In Centre Stage, she performed in Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese fluently, switching languages with ease. In Clean, she performed in fluent British-accented English, Parisian French, Cantonese and a smattering of Mandarin. Unlike most traditional actors in Hong Kong who are Cantonese monolingual, she is a polyglot as a result of her cosmopolitan upbringing.
Audiences outside Asia have become increasingly familiar with her work, including her roles in Centre Stage (as Ruan Lingyu), In the Mood for Love, Irma Vep, 2046, Hero, and, most recently, Clean.
She married French director Olivier Assayas in 1998 but divorced him in 2001. Their relationship remained amicable, however, as in 2004 Cheung made her award-winning movie Clean with him. As part of her portrayal of the drug-addicted aspiring singer Emily Wang in Clean, Maggie Cheung performed songs written by David Roback of Mazzy Star.
On 7 February 2007, The New York Times rated Maggie Cheung as one of the 22 Great Performers in 2006 for her Cannes winning role Emily in Clean.
After 25 years of making movies, Cheung is deciding to retire from acting and pursue a career as a film composer. She allows that there might be room for an occasional comedic role, but she would like to paint and compose music, after fulfilling her acting potential.
(Source: wikipedia)
Maggie in 1984
Some links:
Maggie Cheung @ wikipedia.org
Maggie Cheung @ asiancuties.blogter.hu
Maggie Cheung @ imdb.com
Maggie Cheung @ images.google.com
Maggie Cheung @ flickr.com
Maggie Cheung @ YouTube.com
Maggie for ever! I’m always amazed to see the difference between the cheeky punk girl persona she exhibited in Heroic Trio and her beautifully mature appeal today. She’s so cosmopolitan and glamorous-seeming that it’s always a mild shock to hear her speak with an English Home Counties accent like mine.
She’s 47 years old? wow. Beautiful woman.
JD you said it this womans beauty never fades(plastic surgery or not)… absolutely flawless
Uh, born September 20, 1964 makes her 43 this Thursday by my reckoning. Not that it matters where Maggie’s concerned.
“…one of Asia’s most beautiful women” – I think not! Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying she is unattractive, I just don’t think she’s spectacular or out-of-this-world.
Wow she married a Frenchman,,There’s a chance she’s still a Virgin…….PS she is spectacular….Maybe not the MOST beautiful, but Spectacular YES
Come on guys…..she definitely look very hot for a 43 yrs old woman. She aged really well.
Wow, she is still smoking hot after all these years. Was brilliant in Clean. Thoroughly enjoyed mutiple times all her Wong Kar-Wai work. I didn’t realize she was also talented in music and painting. That makes her even sexier to me.
Maggie was very good in the movie Chinese Box.
I have absolutely NOTHING bad to say about Maggie Cheung. I can’t believe it took this long for her to get her first post here at Asian Sirens.
She is a timeless beauty.
SherBo, can you tell where does your jackass comment come from?
I love Maggie. Even though she doesn’t usually play the glamorous female characters (“Chinese Box” being a prime example, which I liked in spite of Jeremy Irons), she always seems to shine the most.
If I have to explain it..You just don’t get it…
Oh yes I get it, I think the moron who is posting derogatory comments under different aliases (SherBo and GeneralLi this time, notice the use of capital letters) that Dr. Lee needs to delete each time is back! From what I understand of his sick mind, this time he insults women for having to remain virgin for his pleasure, and the French for being gay (?).
Let me tell you this, ass, it’s not because she (and I don’t mean beautiful Maggie, but you know who) left you for a Frenchman that you can post whatever hateful comments. She had just more taste than you credited her for, and she realized what a loser you are… I don’t think she left under the premise that he would not touch her…
Excuse me. but you just don’t get it.. Frenchman are famous for Oral Sex.. It is a common joke that a woman married to Frenchman may not have penis vaginal sex.. Now do you get!
it is alos a joke that if her second husband was Greek, she may still be Cherry..
I don’t post derogatory comments only humor that goes way over your head
SherBo, judging from your comment as GeneralLi above you are obvioulsy posting under two aliases. This is not allowed, as the only reason to do so would be to get up to mischief. Indeed, your injection of off-topic discussion of Jews and anti-semitism is clearly one such attempt. This is a place for intellegent discussion of Asian female beauty and related issues, not silly internet forum games. I have deleted your GeneralLi alias, and I will delete your SherBo alias too if you don’t behave yourself.
Dr Li
Im not looking to breaK the rules. I didn’t realize that I was logged in as General LI. It is my intention to only post as Sherbo….General Li happens to be my Father In Law….It was me who made the post, but I thought I was posting as SherBo.
I will stay on topic. as you can tell from my post I had no Idea I was posting as General Li….
it’s such a shame she married a loser
I don’t post derogatory comments only humor that goes way over your head
sorry sherbo, but it’s like you’re a comedian that keeps on making misses. eventually you just gotta suck it up and take it off stage if you want to avoid tomatoes catapulted at you. i don’t think anyone really knows about these race-based stereotypes and furthermore none of us really find it funny.
I have to agree with Christine. We joke around a lot here – we have a very healthy sense of humour. But you simply aren’t very funny SherBo, no matter how much you try.
Maggie Cheung, though definitely past her prime, is absolutely a hall of famer asian cutie. Her looks are definitely in my top ten most beautiful asian women of all time. She’s also a great actress especially in Wong Kar-Wai’s Days of Being Wild and In the Mood for Love. Maggie’s a diamond in a rough.
Cheung Pak Chi is the new Maggie, can we have a post on her?
ooops sorry maggie, I got you mixed up with Cecilia Cheung, now her husband is a real loser, can’t even do his own jail time
Thanks Robin, The request for Maggie was mine… sorry I was a bit late submiting to this… life gets busy.
Maggies always been a personal favorite of mine. I will admit in part because she is such a timeless beauty, but also because at the age of 43 *same as mine* she isnt just another young piece of eye candy, but a true beauty of my own age group.
Thanks again… Robert
I can tell u she looks great when i saw her in 2007. I ran into her walking down Madison Ave on 50th street in NYC, in the arm of some white guy. She had the perm wave hair in that first picture. She looked striking from 30 feet away, and i could not take my eys off, then finally realizing that was MC. Believe me, being in manhattan, u see a lot of beustiful women, but she had an aura about her. And she was much taller, and more slender than i had realized. A “10” given she is already in her 40s.
wow she doesn’t age at all, comparing her photos from 84 and now…