Carina Lau

Her grandfather, Liu Ji, moved to Thailand in 1935 to make a living and later moved to the country with his wife in 1938, just before the Canton Operation during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Lau's father, Liu Guiming, was born in Thailand on 1940.

Lau's father returned to China in 1955 and with the help of All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, he studied at a junior high school in Guangzhou and high school in Suzhou.

Lau was born on 1965 in Suzhou, Jiangsu, with her ancestral home in Rong County, Guangxi, to Liu Guiming (1940–2006) and Wang Fumei (born 1944).

Following the start of Cultural Revolution in 1965, overseas Chinese who returned to China were targets of criticism.

Carina Lau Kar-ling (born 8 December 1966) is a Hong Kong actress and singer.

She started her acting career in TVB, before going on to achieve success in films after her 2nd year in college.

Lau's father moved to Hong Kong in 1976, while Lau moved to Hong Kong with her mother and brother in 1978, and joined TVB's acting class in 1983.

She was notable in the 1980s for her girl-next-door type roles in films.

Lau made her on-screen debut in TVB's The Clones (1984) where she starred opposite of her future husband, Tony Leung.

She gained wider recognition after a series of appearances in successful drama series such as The Duke of Mount Deer and Police Cadet and skyrocketed to fame following her role as a wealthy heiress in one of Hong Kong's most-watched ever series, Looking Back in Anger (1989).

Lau then expanded to films.

She was nominated at the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actress for her role in Her Beautiful Life Lies (1989).

In 1990, while filming Days of Being Wild, Lau disappeared and Reuters news agency later reported that the actress had been kidnapped, although a police report was not filed.

She received acclaim for her role in Days of Being Wild (1991), one of her many collaborations with film director Wong Kar-wai.

She continued to showcase her versatility with impressive performances in the martial arts epic Saviour of the Soul (1991), the biopic Center Stage (1991), the cross-dressing comedy He's a Woman, She's a Man (1994), and the offbeat romance Gigolo and Whore (1994).

Following parts in the wuxia classic Ashes of Time (1994) and James Bond pastiche Forbidden City Cop (1997), Lau once again attracted the attention of various awards juries with her measured portrayals of bisexual silk factory owner Wan in Intimates (1997) and a prostitute in the 19th-century epic Flowers of Shanghai (1998).

Her roles as Hon Sam's wife in the two Infernal Affairs sequels and an android in Wong Kar-wai's 2046 (2004) further increased Lau's international recognition.

In October 2002, East Week magazine published a nude photo of an "unnamed female star" in visible distress whose face was partially blurred.

The public quickly connected the photo to Lau's abduction 12 years prior, and Lau confirmed that she was the person in the photo.

Massive protests broke out in the following days, led by various Hong Kong entertainment guilds and citizen groups.

Media ethics by Hong Kong tabloids and gossip magazines were questioned.

Hong Kong police became involved and East Week was forced to shut down a few days later.

Lau then stepped in the shoes of Sarah Jessica Parker for the Hong Kong version of Sex and the City, named Sex and the Beauties (2004).

She won rave reviews for her performances as unhappily-married Rose in the low-budget thriller Curiosity Kills the Cat (2006) and as Wu Zetian in the blockbuster Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010), which earned her a Golden Rooster Award for Best Actress and a Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actress, respectively.

She reprised her role as Wu Zetian in two Detective Dee prequels.

Lau was safely retrieved after two hours and in 2008, revealed that she had been abducted by four men working for a triad boss who forced her to strip and took photos of her topless as punishment for refusing a film offer.

No sexual assault took place.

She also plays Empress Wu Zetian in Tsui Hark's Detective Dee films, starting with Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame in 2010.

She has won Best Actress awards at the Hong Kong Film Award and Mainland China's Golden Rooster Awards, and has been nominated at Cannes Film Festival and Taiwan's Golden Horse Awards.

Her husband is Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai.

Lau frequently appears in the Hong Kong fashion scene and is a patron of many charities.

She received a Best Actress nomination at the Cannes Film Festival for her role as a rich housewife abandoned by her husband in Bends (2013).

In 2016, Lau was one of the celebrities that appeared on the Chinese reality show Up Idol.

Since then, she has made guest appearances in other mainland reality TV shows.

In June 2017, she and her husband were invited to become a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In 2021, she hosted Reflection, a short web series interviewing various female celebrities.

She will launch her own talk show titled the Carina Show in 2022.

She was executive president of Hong Kong's TVMART channel, but was replaced by the board after a loss of 40 million Taiwan Dollars.

She told the media that because she had no education, the decisions made by her had some negative influences on the company.