Yuen Biao

Peking Opera school

Yuen Biao, born Ha Lingchun on 26 July 1957, entered the China Drama Academy as a child, the Hong Kong Peking Opera school run by master Yu Jim-yuen. He stayed until he was 16. Training was harsh: acrobatics, stage combat, weapons, singing and acting from morning to night. Like many pupils, he took the stage name "Yuen" in honour of his teacher.

His classmates included Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan, Corey Yuen and Yuen Wah. With them he was one of the Seven Little Fortunes, the troupe of top pupils who performed on stage. The youngest of the group became its most airborne acrobat: back flips, twists and falls timed to the inch.

Stuntman for Bruce Lee

By the early 1970s opera was in decline and the former pupils moved into film. Yuen Biao worked as a stuntman, including on Fist of Fury and The Way of the Dragon with Bruce Lee. In Game of Death (1978), pieced together after Lee's death, he performed the acrobatics that the main double, Kim Tai-chung, could not. He was credited at the time as Bill Yuen or Jimmy Yuen.

The big roles

Sammo Hung gave him his first lead in Knockabout (1979). In The Prodigal Son (1981), also directed by Hung, he plays Leung Jan, a rich young man who learns his victories were bought and sets out to learn Wing Chun. The character is real: Leung Jan was a 19th-century Wing Chun master. The film won Best Action Choreography at the first Hong Kong Film Awards in 1982, shared by Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung's team; he won it again the following year for Winners & Sinners. That same year Yuen Woo-ping directed him in Dreadnaught (1981), as a timid young man who learns to fight.

With Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung he formed an on-screen trio Hong Kong audiences queued for: Project A (1983), where he plays Inspector Hong, Wheels on Meals (1984), shot in Barcelona, and Dragons Forever (1988). Hung also directed him in Millionaires Express (1986) and Eastern Condors (1987). He made Righting Wrongs (1986) with Cynthia Rothrock and The Iceman Cometh (1989) with Maggie Cheung, and Tsui Hark cast him as Leung Foon, the pupil of Jet Li's Wong Fei-hung, in Once Upon a Time in China (1991).

Style and legacy

His screen style comes from opera: fast, precise fights punctuated by acrobatics filmed without tricks. Where Jackie Chan leaned on comedy and Sammo Hung on power, Yuen Biao brought speed and lightness. He directed A Kid from Tibet (1992), produced by his own company. Later he played Inspector Steve Mok in Rob-B-Hood (2006) alongside Jackie Chan, and returned to Leung Jan on television in the series Real Kung Fu (2005) and Wing Chun. He has worked on more than 80 films as actor, stuntman or choreographer.