How Chow Yun-fat became a Hong Kong cinema superstar without losing his humility - A special profile from SCMP

Chow Yun-fat at an interview with the Post in 2003. The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star can still be found taking the bus in Hong Kong or buying food at his local market, despite his global success. -- Photo: K.Y. Cheng / SCMP

SCMP (HONG KONG): For five decades, Chow Yun-fat has been two people.

There is the global superstar: the impossibly cool anti-hero of John Woo Yu-sum’s action classics such as The Killer (1989) and Hard Boiled (1992); the stoic, high-flying warrior of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000); and one of the highest-paid actors in Chinese-language cinema.