Ang Lee

Both of Lee's parents moved following the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 from De'an, Jiangxi province in Mainland China to Taiwan.

He grew up in a household that put a heavy emphasis on education.

Lee studied in the Provincial Tainan First Senior High School (now National Tainan First Senior High School) where his father was the principal.

He was expected to pass the annual Joint College/University Entrance Examination, the only route to a university education in Republic of China.

Ang Lee (born October 23, 1954) is a Taiwanese filmmaker.

His films are known for their emotional charge and exploration of repressed, hidden emotions.

During his career, he has received international critical and popular acclaim and numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, four BAFTA Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards.

Seeing Ingmar Bergman's film The Virgin Spring (1960) was a formative experience for him.

But after failing the exam twice, to the disappointment of his father, he entered a three-year college, the National Arts School (now reorganized and expanded as National Taiwan University of Arts), and graduated in 1975.

His father had wanted him to become a professor, but he had become interested in drama and the arts in college.

This early frustration set his career on the path of performance art.

After finishing his mandatory military service in the Republic of China Navy (ROCN), Lee went to the US in 1979 to study at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where he completed his bachelor's degree in theater in 1980.

Originally, Lee was interested in acting, but his challenges with speaking English made it difficult, and he quickly turned to directing.

At UIUC, Lee met his future wife, Jane Lin, also a student from Taiwan, who was pursuing her PhD degree.

Thereupon, he enrolled at the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University, where he received his MFA in film production.

He was a classmate of Spike Lee and worked on the crew of his thesis film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.

During graduate school, Lee finished a 16mm short film, Shades of the Lake (1982), which won the Best Drama Award in Short Film in Taiwan.

His own thesis work, a 43-minute drama, Fine Line (1984), won NYU's Wasserman Award for Outstanding Direction and was also chosen for broadcast by the Public Broadcasting Service.

Life after graduation

Lee's NYU thesis drew attention from the William Morris Agency, the famous talent and literary agency that later represented Lee.

At first, though, WMA found Lee few opportunities, and Lee remained unemployed for six years.

During this time, he was a full-time house-husband, while his wife Jane Lin, a molecular biologist, was the sole breadwinner for the family of four.

This arrangement put enormous pressure on the couple, but with Lin's support and understanding, Lee did not abandon his career in film but continued to generate new ideas from movies and performances.

He also wrote several screenplays during this time.

In 1990, Lee submitted two screenplays, Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet, to a competition sponsored by Government Information Office of R.O.C., and they came in first and second, respectively.

The winning screenplays brought Lee to the attention of Hsu Li-kong, a recently promoted senior manager in a major studio who had a strong interest in Lee's unique style and freshness.

He rose to prominence directing films such as Pushing Hands (1991), The Wedding Banquet (1993), and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), which explored the relationships and conflicts between tradition and modernity, Eastern and Western; the three films are informally known as the "Father Knows Best" trilogy.

The films were critically successful both in Taiwan and internationally.

Hsu, a first-time producer, invited Lee to direct Pushing Hands, a full-length feature that debuted in 1991.

The 'Father Knows Best' trilogy

Pushing Hands (1991) was a success in Taiwan both among critics and at the box office.

It received eight nominations in the Golden Horse Film Festival, Taiwan's premier film festival.

Inspired by the success, Hsu Li-kong collaborated with Lee in their second film, The Wedding Banquet (1993), which won the Golden Bear at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival and was nominated as the Best Foreign Language Film in both the Golden Globe and the Academy Awards.

His breakthrough in Hollywood was the costume drama Sense and Sensibility (1995), which was also his first entirely English-language film.

Lee went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Director twice for

He directed films in a broad range of genres, including the drama The Ice Storm (1997); the martial arts drama Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000); the superhero blockbuster Hulk (2003) and the erotic espionage drama Lust, Caution (2007).

Ang Lee was born in a Waishengren family, in a military dependents' village of the Republic of China Armed Forces, located in Chaochou, Pingtung, a southern agricultural county in Taiwan.

In 2003, he was ranked 27th in The Guardian 40 best directors.

Born in Pingtung County, Lee was educated in Taiwan and later in the United States.

the romantic drama Brokeback Mountain (2005); and the survival drama Life of Pi (2012).