Andy Lau (full name Andy Lau Takva) - actor, cameraman, screenwriter, director, producer, singer, one of Hong Kong's most famous and successful actors. Lau is the Asian Film Academy Award winner and twice nominated for the same award for Best Actor in the films “Battle of the Minds” and “Simple Life”.
Lau's biography began in the early 1980s. He played in the films People in Boats, Once Upon a Rainbow, and also appeared in the series Legend of Master Co.
To date, the actor has more than one hundred and sixty roles in television and cinema. During the 2008 Summer Paralympic Games in Beijing, Lau sang the song "Everyone is No.1", which became the official anthem of the competition.
Facts from the biography
The boy was born in the fall of 1961 in Hong Kong. The family lived in one of the poorest areas of the city. In their house there was not even water, the children had to constantly run after it to the nearest column. The boy's father worked in the fire brigade. Mom was engaged in housekeeping and raising children, of whom there were six in the family: two sons and four daughters.
The father always dreamed that his children received a good education and were able to live with dignity, finding a prestigious job. Desiring to carry out his plans, his father sold a small piece of land belonging to his family to move to Hong Kong, where the children began to study at school.
Creative way
Andy never dreamed of an acting career. Having been educated at school, and then at Ho Lap College, Lau once saw an ad that actors were being recruited by the television channel TVB. Then he decided that he wanted to try himself in a completely new profession. That's why I went to enter courses in 1980.
Two years later, Lau signed a contract with the television channel TVB and began acting in TV shows. For several years, he played roles in projects: Emissary, Prince of the Deer of the Hill, Return of the Condor Heroes, Saga of the Yangs.
Lau decided that you should not limit yourself to just playing in television projects. Therefore, already in 1981 appeared in several videos of Suzanne Kwan. Then he was noticed by the famous director Teddy Robin and offered to star in the full-length film "Once Upon a Rainbow", which was released in 1982.
In the same year, Lau starred in People in a Boat, breaking a box office record and earning a young actor a nomination for the Hong Kong Film Awards (similar to the American Academy Award).
From that moment, Lau's career began to grow rapidly. He starred in several television projects and decided to come to grips with work in a big movie.
However, the company TVB, with which Lau had previously signed a contract, tried in every possible way to limit the actor’s participation in the filming of feature films. A year before the contract expired, Andy was offered to renew the contract for another five years, but he refused. Because of this, a conflict arose with management. As a result, the actor was excluded from all television projects for a year, until the end of the current contract.
Over the course of the year, Lau wasn’t filming anywhere, but as soon as the contract with TVB came to an end, he left television. And soon became one of the most famous and popular movie actors in Hong Kong.
In the early 1990s, Lau founded the film production company Teamwork Motion Pictures Limited. The first film of its own production was the action movie "Savior of the Soul."
Lau is one of the most famous actors of Hong Kong cinema. In addition, he successfully builds a musical career and is one of the four kings of the cantopop (musical direction related to Hong Kong pop music performed in the Cantonese dialect).
In 2005, Lau was voted Hong Kong's most successful and grossing movie actor in the past twenty years.
