Actors - Jacky Cheung

Home > Listing Index > Actors > Jacky Cheung

	Actors - Jacky Cheung

Jacky Cheung Hok-Yau (; born July 10, 1961) is a Hong Kong singer and film star from the late 1980s to the present. Dubbed "the God of Songs" by the Cantopop industry (歌神), Cheung is regarded by many as one of the finest male singers to have come out of Hong Kong, known for his rich baritone voice, wide range and exceptional interpretative powers. Since the early 1990's, he is arguably the world's most popular and respected Chinese pop singer.

He was the national singing champion in Hong Kong 1984 with the song 'Fatherland', ousting more than ten thousand other contestants. He was signed by then Polygram Records, now Universal Music Group. Although encouraged by a bright start, he was not yet able to achieve supremacy in Cantopop, then dominated by Leslie Cheung, Alan Tam, Anita Mui and Danny Chan. Cheung suffered a nosedive in his career after a best-selling first two albums. His subsequent sales record dipped and one of his albums in the late 1980s managed just around ten thousand in sales. The reason for the fall in his CD sales was partially due to his alcohol problem. He would get drunk 5 times a week and after disrubting his friend's son's birthday party, Cheung vowed in public that he wouldn't drink till he was 40 and he kept that promise.

His recording career subsequently returned to its track. Then, in 1991, with the song '每天爱你多一些' (Loving You More Everyday), his career took a massive upturn. The album, True Love Expression, as well as the succeeding release, Love Sparks, became the two most successful albums in Hong Kong history, achieving audited sales of over 400,000 copies in Hong Kong alone, and turned Cheung into a superstar, paving the way for contemporaries Andy Lau, Leon Lai and Aaron Kwok to take Cantopop to an even greater heights. Since then his career has grown from strength to strength, and Cheung has managed to garner thousands of fans overseas as well as numerous music awards both in Hong Kong and elsewhere, including the best-selling Chinese singer in the Worlds Music Awards. Cheung has also been elected one of the world's Ten Outstanding Young Persons.

Among his most famous songs are 'Amour', '只想一生跟你走' (Only Thinking of Going Through Life With You) and the everlasting '吻别' (Goodbye Kiss) which confirms his status as one, and many consider the pre-eminent member, of the 'Four Heavenly Kings' of Cantopop. "Goodbye Kiss", a Mandarin number, was also one of the best-selling albums of all time, achieving more sales in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia such as not attained before, with an astounding 5 million copies sold in 1993 alone, a record that has remained yet unbroken. Goodbye Kiss was also instrumental in helping Cheung to break into the mando-pop market, and it also prompted other Hong Kong singers who wanted to gain a wider market to follow suit, even though, to this very day, very few indeed have been able to approach Cheung's level of success.

His work on the ground-breaking cantonese musical "Snow, Wolf, Lake" musical (1997) was also enthusiastically received by both audiences and critics. This musical was a joint effort with fellow singer Sandy Lam and they achieved 43 full-house performances at the gigantic Hong Kong Coliseum. Not long ago, in November 2004, Jacky teamed up with Leslie Cheung's former manager Florence Chan Suk-Fan to work on the revised Mandarin version of "Snow, Wolf, Lake" where the estimated cost production was HK$100 million and which premiered on December 24 2004. The production subsequently toured China and other Asian destinations to huge acclaim and rousing ovations.

In Cantopop, artists are often classified into the idol class (偶像級) vs. the skilled class (實力級). Jacky, along with veterans such as Hacken Lee and Chris Wong, is among those of the skilled singers.

Cheung acted in many films, although singing has always been his priority. He received the Best Supporting Actor Golden Horse Award for his work in Swordsman (1990). He also received the Best Actor Award at the New Dehli Film Festival for his portrayal of the protagonist in July Rhapsody.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Jacky Cheung ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Jacky Cheung; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Actors - Jacky Cheung

Searches on eBay

Related searches on eBay