Leslie Cheung was born in Hong Kong on the 12th of September, 1956. After years of studying in Hong Kong, he was then sent to England. After studying highschool there, he entered the University of Leeds. After a year, he decided to come back to Hong Kong and by chance, he was encouraged by his friends to enter the Second Asian Song Contest, which he did, and got second place by the song "American Pie." There he began his career as an actor at what was then known as the Rediffusion Television, which is known today as the Asia Television. In 1981, Leslie released his solo album "The Wind Continues to blow", which launched Leslie's career as one of Hong Kong's most popular male singers. He soon became well known and recognized as a film actor as well, appearing in such acclaimed films as Patrick Tam's Nomad (1982), John Woo's A Better Tomorrow I & II (1986,1988). Tsui Hark and Ching Siu-tung's A Chinese Ghost Story I & II (1987,1988) , Stanley Kwan's Rouge (1988) and Wong Kar-wai's Days of Being Wild (1990).
Throughout the late 1980's, Leslie became one of the most loved male singer in Hong Kong with the songs such as "Monica", "Stand up", "The wild wind"... which everybody would have known. However, in 1989, 1990 when Leslie's fame was at its peak, he decided to leave his career. Having to quit his image as
a recording artist, he immigrated to Vancouver, Canada, which, was perhaps the most horrible news ever to all the fans that loved him. The makers
of FareWell to My Concubine, however, persuaded
him to stay on a bit longer to take the role of Cheng
Dieyi in the movie. To prepare for this relatively challenging role, he spent a long time
training in the movements and gestures of the Peking Opera
and learned to speak the Peking dialect, which was not a very easy task considering that his mother tongue was Cantonese. After contributing in
Farewell My Concubine, Leslie also participated in Ashes of
Time, a martial arts constume drama directed by Wong
Kar-wai.
After dropping his career as a singer for 7 years, he finally decided to come back onto the stage again. To many fans' delight, he held his "re-appearing concert" in 1997, which drove a great amount of controversy in Hong Kong. After that he continued his singing again and released a number of albums including "Adore You", "Red", the EP "All those years", "Printemps", the "Untitled" EP, "Counting down with you", "Big Heat" and "Forever Leslie". Beginning in summer 2000 he held the PASSION concert tour starting from Hong Kong, covering countries like mainland China, Japan,the U.S. and Canada.
2002 he released a joint-album with Anthony Wong Yiu-Ming and took part in his last movie "Inner Senses". 2003 he began recording for his 88th album, but before it was finished, on April 1st Leslie committed suicide. He was 46 years old.
