China-born actress Cheng Pei-pei, who starred in Oscar-winning movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has died in San Francisco on the age of 78.
A pioneer of martial arts roles for feminine actors, Cheng grew to become a significant performer in motion movies after she starred in Come Drink with Me by King Hu in 1966. The movie achieved essential acclaim and received Cheng worldwide consideration.
After transferring to the US she impressed a brand new era of administrators from East Asia to Hollywood to make female-driven swordplay movies.
Cheng’s household mentioned she had been privately battling a neurodegenerative mind illness with signs just like Parkinson’s since 2019 and handed away on Wednesday.
“Our mother needed to be remembered by how she was: the legendary Queen of Martial Arts… a flexible, award-winning actress whose movie and tv profession spanned over six a long time, not solely in Asia however internationally as effectively,” her household wrote on Fb.
Born in Shanghai in 1946, Cheng moved to Hong Kong in 1962 and shortly received acclaim as an actor with the discharge of Come Drink with Me. The movie is taken into account top-of-the-line examples of “wuxia” movies – a interval film style celebrating legendary martial artists from historic China.
Within the movie she performed the position of Golden Swallow, the sister of an essential chief who was kidnapped by a band of thugs. A kung-fu grasp, her character was dispatched to rescue her brother.
The movie, chosen because the Hong Kong entry for the Finest International Language Movie on the thirty ninth Academy Awards, launched her profession on the age of 19.
Coupled with its 1968 sequel, Golden Swallow, the position noticed Cheng win scores of components in martial arts movies as a fearless swordswoman.
Her character went on to determine the motif of the lone feminine murderer, despatched out to hunt revenge. The style would closely affect Quentin Tarantino’s field workplace hits, Kill Invoice: Quantity 1 and Kill Invoice: Quantity 2.
Cheng moved to California within the early Seventies and performed dozens of roles as an iconic motion heroine through the golden age of Hong Kong martial arts movies.
Her largest position got here in 2000, in director Ang Lee’s wuxia-inspired Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the place she performed the villain, Jade Fox. It was one of many first mainstream martial arts movies to characteristic a feminine lead.
The movie grew to become a worldwide hit, successful 10 Academy Awards nominations, together with Finest Image. It earned $128 million on the North American field workplace and received Finest International Language Movie on the Oscars, in addition to on the Golden Globes and the BAFTAs.
It grew to become the primary foreign-language movie to gross greater than $100 million worldwide.
Her ultimate position was within the live-action Disney model of “Mulan” in 2020, the place she performed because the matchmaker to the eponymous heroine.
Her Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon co-star Michelle Yeoh hailed Cheng in a message posted to Instagram. “We’ll miss your kindness and shining expertise,” she wrote.
After her sickness was identified 5 years in the past, Cheng selected to not make her situation public and as a substitute frolicked along with her 4 youngsters and grandchildren.
Her household mentioned she had requested that as a substitute of flowers, donations be made to the Mind Assist Community (BSN) the place she donated her mind.
