Kenneth Tsang


Kenneth Tsang Kong was a Hong Kong actor, whose career spanned nearly 70 years and over 200 film roles. A romantic leading man in Cantonese dramas and martial arts films during the 1960s and '70s, he gained international recognition for his supporting roles in contemporary crime and action pictures during the following decades, most notably in the films of John Woo. He also appeared in several Hollywood productions.
Aged 81, Tsang won the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Overheard 3, with a previous nomination for Overheard 2. In 2022, the year of his death, he received the Huading Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Early life and education

Tsang Koon-yat was born in Shanghai with family roots in, Zhuhai, Guangdong. Tsang attended high school in Wah Yan College, Hong Kong and then Wah Yan College, Kowloon. He received his university education in the United States, attending McMurry College in Abilene, Texas for his freshman year and transferred to University of California, Berkeley, where he received a degree in architecture.

Career

Tsang returned to Hong Kong in the early 1960s as an architect but was unsatisfied by the work. His younger sister by 2 years, Jeanette Lin, was a film star at the time and provided Tsang with several connections in the industry which boosted his acting career.
Tsang's film debut was in the movie The Feud when he was 21, which was followed by a role in Who Isn't Romantic?. In the mid-1960s, Tsang starred in detective films and classic kung fu movies with Hong Kong teen idols Connie Chan Po-chu and Josephine Siao. Tsang also appeared in a few Wong Fei-Hung movies in the late 1960s.
In 1986, Tsang worked as taxi cab owner, Ken, in John Woo's A Better Tomorrow. Subsequent collaborations with Woo included the role of Ken in A Better Tomorrow 2 in 1987, police officer Danny Lee's murdered partner in The Killer in 1989, and the strict adoptive father of Chow Yun-fat, Leslie Cheung and Cherie Chung in Once a Thief in 1991.
Tsang also filmed several Singaporean Chinese dramas during the 1990s, notably the 1995 epic The Teochew Family and The Unbeatables II in 1996.
Up to this point, Tsang had played roles in mainly Hong Kong movies. His first Hollywood film was The Replacement Killers, also the Hollywood debut of co-star Chow Yun-fat. Tsang appeared alongside Chow once again in Anna and the King as well as Jackie Chan in Rush Hour 2. Tsang played General Moon in the James Bond film Die Another Day, and he continued to appear in films from Hong Kong.

Personal life

Tsang had a younger sister, , who was also a Hong Kong actress.
Tsang was married three times. His first wife was Chan Laidi, stage name Lan Di, a Malaysian-Chinese and his co-star in The Big Circus and had a son. They divorced ten years later in 1979 and his son left to live with his mother. They have since resided in Vancouver, Canada. Chan died in 1991.
In 1980, Tsang married columnist and model Barbara Tang and had a daughter, Musette. Tsang and Tang divorced 10 years later in 1990.
In 1994 Tsang married Taiwanese actress Chiao Chiao.

Death

Tsang departed from Singapore and arrived in Hong Kong on 25 April 2022, where he began a seven-day COVID-19 quarantine at the Kowloon Hotel. On the evening of 26 April, he experienced chest discomfort and asked his family to deliver his medication for chronic hypertension, which they promptly did. However, the following day, he was found unresponsive in his room by health officials who arrived to conduct a PCR test, and paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene.

Filmography

Film

Sources:

Television

Awards and nominations

YearOrganisationCategoryNominated workResultRef
1999Star AwardsTop 10 Most Popular Male ArtistesNomitated
2015Hong Kong Film AwardBest Supporting ActorOverheard 3 竊聽風雲3
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