Stephen Chow Sing Chi (sometimes Chiau Sing Chi) was born in 1962 in Hong-Kong. Chow's admiration for Bruce Lee started very early in his teen. He was influenced by Lee's philosophy and films and decided to take on martial art training and to try his luck in show business. Chow didn't manage to enter the local TV channel TVB drama classes where his mate Tony Leung Chiu Wai learnt his craft. As a matter of fact, he ended up hosting a child programme called 430 Space Shuttle for 5 years. He then got small roles in TV series. By the end of the eighties, he alternated TV series with small roles in movies. In 1988, he appeared for the first time in a feature film called He Who Chases After The Wind with Alex Man who gave him his first acting tips.
Chow's next role was more important, with Final Justice, a typical Danny Lee copper flick, his silver screen career could really get started. He even won the Best Supporting Role Award at the 25th Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan . Stephen Chow carried on a while with pure action movie genre, which was very popular at the time in HK. He appeared in Jet Li's The Defector and John Woo's Just Heroes. Funny enough, these three roles showed Stephen Chow as a youngster trapped by various series of life events and who couldn't control his fate. Young Chow wanted badly to achieve and to control his career in order to become a big and successful star.
In 1990, Chow has the good idea to team up with local acclaimed directors Wong Jing and Jeff Lau. That would be an understatement to say that the resulting films, respectively God Of Gamblers 2 and All For The Winner, were huge successes, grossing more than HK$ 40 million each at the local box office, a long way ahead of one of the last Hui Bros. film Front Page. Moleitau comedies became Chow's favourite film genre and the genre where he could evolved the best.
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