Andy Lau

Lau was born in Tai Po, British Hong Kong to fireman Lau Lai (1934-2023).

He is the fourth of six siblings and has three elder sisters, one younger sister, and a younger brother named Lau Tak-sing.

Although his family was considered wealthy due to his grandfather being a landowner with farmland and villages, his father moved them to the slums of Diamond Hill when he was six years old so he could receive a bilingual education to improve his English.

The area was full of wooden houses, which unfortunately burnt down when he was eleven.

During his childhood, Lau had to fetch water for his family up to eight times a day as their house lacked plumbing.

He graduated from a Band One secondary school, Ho Lap College in San Po Kong, Kowloon.

He was named as Lau Fook-wing during his academic years.

He also practices Chinese calligraphy and hair styling.

He was raised in a nominally Buddhist household and is a follower of the Lingyan Mountain Temple in Taiwan.

Andrew Lau Tak-wah (born 27 September 1961) is a Hong Kong actor, singer-songwriter and film producer.

He was named the "Fourth Tiger" among the Five Tiger Generals of TVB in the 1980s as well as one of the Four Heavenly Kings of Cantopop in the 1990s.

By 2024, Lau has shot over 200 films and released over 100 records.

In 1981, Lau enrolled in the artist training program offered by TVB, marking the beginning of his acting career.

In 1981, Lau made a guest appearance in one of Susanna Kwan's music videos and caught the eye of the manager Teddy Robin, who gave Lau a minor role in the film, Once Upon a Rainbow.

This was the first step in Lau's film acting career.

It was his portrayal of the lead role in the 1982 TVB series The Emissary that initially propelled him to fame.

He landed a role in Ann Hui's 1982 film, Boat People.

Lau's popularity further soared in 1983 with his role as Yang Guo in the TVB wuxia series The Return of the Condor Heroes.

Following this breakthrough, he went on to assume numerous lead roles in various TVB series.

In September 1983, TVB aimed to improve their variety show ratings in competition with Korea and Japan by producing the show TVB All-star challenge (星光熠熠勁爭輝).

The program featured almost the entire lineup of the most popular actors and singers at that time.

Lau, alongside Tony Leung, Michael Miu, Felix Wong, and Kent Tong became known as the "Five Tiger Generals of TVB" due to their popularity on the show.

In the late '80s, Lau departed from TVB due to contract disputes.

TVB insisted on a binding five-year exclusive contract, which Lau declined to sign, leading to his blacklisting by the network.

Consequently, Lau shifted his focus towards his film career.

Later in 1983, he had his first leading role in the Shaw Brothers-produced action film, On the Wrong Track.

One of his early leading roles included the more serious 1988 film, The Truth.

However, Lau is best known in films for his (often) recurring roles as a "Heroic Gangster", such as Wong Kar-wai's 1988 film As Tears Go By and Benny Chan's 1990 film A Moment of Romance.

Although now a respected actor, Lau was initially known more for his handsome features.

Some people he has worked with have called him a matinee idol, but he has claimed to be an artist.

Lau has proved his acting skills in many of his films.

His first major acting prize came with A Fighter's Blues, which was his first Golden Bauhinia Award for Best Actor.

He won the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor award that year for Running Out of Time.

Lau won the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor three times, the Golden Horse Award for Best Leading Actor twice, and was entered into the Guinness World Records for the "Most Awards Won by a Cantopop Male Artist" in 2000, with a total of 444 music awards by 2006.

Forbes magazine has ranked Lau as one of the world's highest-paid actors.

In 2004, he won the Golden Horse Award for Best Leading Actor for his performance in Infernal Affairs III, the second sequel to the popular Infernal Affairs.

In 2005, Lau received the "No.1 Box office Actor 1985–2005" award of Hong Kong, yielding a box office total of HKD 1,733,275,816 for shooting 108 films in the past 20 years.

In 2018, Lau was invited to be a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In 2024, Lau was elected vice chairman of the 11th China Film Association.

Over a career of four decades, Lau has been one of the most commercially and critically successful artists in the Chinese world.