Sammo Hung

Peking opera school

Sammo Hung, born Hung Kam-bo, was born on 7 January 1952 in Hong Kong. In 1961, aged nine, he entered the China Drama Academy, Master Yu Jim-yuen's Peking opera school, for a seven-year course. Pupils learned acrobatics, falls, staged combat, weapons, singing and acting. Like his classmates he took his master's name and performed as Yuen Lung.

The senior member of the Seven Little Fortunes troupe, he trained alongside Yuen Lo, the future Jackie Chan, and Yuen Biao. As a child he appeared in several films, including Big and Little Wong Tin Bar (1962) with Jackie Chan. At 14 he did his first stunts on a film set. He left the school at 16 after an injury and became a stuntman. Crews nicknamed him Sammo.

Stuntman to choreographer

In 1966 he joined Shaw Brothers as assistant to action director Han Ying-chieh on King Hu's Come Drink with Me. He worked his way up from extra to stuntman to fight coordinator. In 1970 Raymond Chow hired him at Golden Harvest, which in the early 1970s sent him to South Korea. There he studied hapkido under Ji Han-jae, one of the art's founding figures, and earned a black belt. He went on to choreograph Hapkido (1972) with Angela Mao, then King Hu's The Fate of Lee Khan (1973).

Western audiences first saw him in the opening scene of Enter the Dragon (1973): he is Bruce Lee's opponent in the film's first fight. He also choreographed The Man from Hong Kong (1975), Golden Harvest's Australian co-production, and the completed version of Game of Death (1978).

The director

His first film as director, The Iron-Fisted Monk (1977), is often cited among the first kung fu comedies. Enter the Fat Dragon (1978) followed, a send-up of Bruce Lee imitators, then Warriors Two (1978) and The Prodigal Son (1981), both built around wing chun; the latter won him the Hong Kong Film Award for best action choreography. With Encounters of the Spooky Kind (1980) he mixed kung fu with Chinese hopping ghosts (jiangshi), a vein that led to Mr. Vampire (1985), which he produced.

Winners and Sinners (1983) launched the Lucky Stars series. Project A (1983) brought the three former pupils of Yu Jim-yuen together as adults for the first time: Jackie Chan, Yuen Biao and Hung himself. The trio reunited in Wheels on Meals (1984), shot in Barcelona, and Dragons Forever (1988). He produced Yes, Madam (1985), which launched Michelle Yeoh and Cynthia Rothrock, and directed Eastern Condors (1987), a commando mission in the Vietnam War. In Painted Faces (1988) he played his own master, Yu Jim-yuen, and won the Hong Kong Film Award for best actor.

The Sammo Hung style and later career

Heavy-set but extremely agile, Sammo Hung built a style all his own: very fast hand exchanges, hard falls learned at the opera school, props turned into weapons, kicks from hapkido, and comedy and brutality in the same sequence. He shoots fights in fairly wide frames so the whole movement stays visible.

He left Golden Harvest in 1991 after 21 years. He went on to direct Mr. Nice Guy (1997) with Jackie Chan, choreographed Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time, and headlined the CBS series Martial Law (1998-2000). He returned to the front rank in SPL (2005), opposite Donnie Yen. Action director on Ip Man (2008), he played hung gar master Hung Chan-nam in Ip Man 2 (2010); the two films earned him best action choreography awards at the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards. The Hong Kong Film Awards gave him a lifetime achievement award in 2024.