Great quotes from Hong Kong Actors

Hong Kong films have inspired some high profile people to utter some highly quotable lines over the years. Here are some of the most memorable.

"American stuntmen are smart - they think about safety. When they do a jump in a car, they calculate everything: the speed, the distance... But in Hong Kong, we don't know how to count. Everything we do is a guess. If you've got the guts, you do it. All of my stuntmen have gotten hurt." Jackie Chan

"There are many kinds of movies in Hong Kong. Some are commercial and others are more artistic." Andy Lau

"That's so different in Hong Kong when I'm using my own mother language, I can treat the line in one thousand different ways, with many different reactions." Chow Yun Fat

"In the West audiences think I am a stereotyped action star, or that I always play hitmen or killers. But in Hong Kong, I did a lot of comedy, many dramatic films, and most of all, romantic roles, lots of love stories. I was like a romance novel hero." Chow Yun Fat

"I just want people to remember me like I remember Buster Keaton. When they talk about Buster Keaton or Gene Kelly, people say, 'Ah yes, they good.' Maybe one day, they remember Jackie Chan that way." Jackie Chan

"You know, if I tell the press that I like long blonde hair, the next day there will be girls with long hair wigs outside waiting for me." Andy Lau

"Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential." Bruce Lee

"I knew nothing about martial arts. The coach told me I was talented with learning martial arts, and put me in a school. Three years later I got my first championship in China." Jet Li

"When I was an actor in some movies a long time ago, I was so curious about all the camera movements - why is the camera placed here, and why does it move like this? And why the set and the background, the color? It's a lot of questions for me to ask, because I was so interested, not only in acting, but also the whole process of filmmaking." Stephen Chow

Great quotes about Hong Kong culture

The wonderful, buzzing culture of Hong Kong has inspired many great and famous quotes down the centuries. Here are some of the best lines uttered about HK.

"Hong Kong has created one of the most successful societies on Earth." Prince Charles

"Hong Kong girls have a genius sense of style. I came back to the States thinking no one here has any individuality. Or cute enough socks." Camilla Belle

"English is my second language, but in Hong Kong, they don't know that I'm from China. They think I'm from Hollywood because all the films they see are from here. China and Hong Kong are very different places, but they're starting to merge. Still the culture is very different." Bai Ling

"You can leave Hong Kong, but it will never leave you" Nury Vittachi

"How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn't want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed." David Mitchell

"If you're too free, you're like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic." Jackie Chan

"Every inch of space was used. As the road narrowed, signs receded upwards and changed to the vertical. Businesses simply soared from ground level and hung out vaster, more fascinatingly illuminated shingles than competitors. We were still in a traffic tangle, but now the road curved. Shops crowded the pavements and became homelier. Vegetables, spices, grocery produce in boxes or hanging from shop lintels, meats adangle - as always, my ultimate ghastliness - and here and there among the crowds the alarming spectacle of an armed Sikh, shotgun aslant, casually sitting at a bank entrance. And markets everywhere." Jonathan Gash

"When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there." Paul Theroux

"The problem with a lot of Chinese is that they put up divisions between Taiwanese, Hong Kong natives, mainlanders. We are never united. I really hope that the Chinese can be more united." Martin Yan

Famous Hong Kong actors: Jackie Chan

Though Bruce Lee may be the most revered Hong Kong martial artist of all time, Jackie Chan is quite probably the best loved. His incredible stunt performance, sense of humour, likable personality and gift for slapstick have made him a star across the planet, with over 150 films to his name since the 1960s.

Chan began his career early, as a child actor in such Hong Kong classics as the Love Eterne in 1963. As he entered his teens he also began training in martial arts, where he would eventually earn a black belt. After rising through the ranks in Hong Kong cinema, Chan got his first break in Kung Fu as a stuntman on Bruce Lee's Fist of Fury. Though he was cast as a leading man in two adult comedies soon after, their failure discouraged Chan's ambitions and he briefly immigrated to Australia where he worked in construction.

He was soon called back to Hong Kong, however, by producers who had seen his daring stunt work. His second run at a movie career was much more successful. His first big hit came in 1978 with Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, which, along with his next flick Drunken Master, introduced the world to the comedy/ action genre. This was a step to the left of Bruce Lee's po-faced, philosophical martial arts. Chan's films were just as packed with impressive physicality as Lee's, but that physicality was now married to a sense of the absurd and ridiculous.

Chan next went to America to try to crack the international market, but his roles in Cannonball Run and The Protector did not have the break-out effect he had hoped for. Back in Hong Kong, Chan's star continued to rise, as his role in the Police Story movies and Armour of God made him Asia's biggest star. In the 1990s Chan made his second attempt at an American breakthrough and, this time, he emerged triumphant. After 1996's successful Rumble in the Bronx, he co-starred with Chris Tucker in Rush Hour in 1998, a comedy/ crime film that would take $130 million in the US alone and spawn a massively successful franchise.

Since then Chan has taken his unique blend of comedy and crazy stunts to an even greater level of renown, with the Transporter movies. Now 59, he remains one of the most recognised film stars on the planet.

Classic Hong Kong Films Pt. 3

The final part of our look at some of the all-time great Hong Kong films, this instalment looks at three of the most influential movies to come from the island.

Long Arm of the Law (1984) Before the likes of John Woo and Ringo Lam made Hong Kong action one of the world's hottest genres, Johnny Mak made this set piece heavy crime flick that drew the blueprint they would follow. It tells the tale of a group of Red Guards who turn to bank robbery in the hope of striking it rich in the ‘new', modernised Hong Kong. Packed with Mexican stand offs, adrenaline fuelled chase sequences and explosive ambushes, its influence on both Asian and American crime cinema of the following decade cannot be overestimated.

The Arch (1969) The Arch depicts the breakdown of a 17th Century widow (Lisa Lu), bedevilled by her desire for a strapping army captain (Roy Chiao) who is simultaneously lusting after her daughter (Hilda Chou Hsuan). An intricately woven visual tapestry by Cecile Tang, it is probably Hong Kong's greatest art-house film and massively influential on independent cinema worldwide over the next twenty years.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) This gravity defying epic did not just change the world's perception of martial arts movies; it changed the world's perception of Chinese cinema itself. The worldwide acclaim and box office popularity of Ang Lee's masterpiece ushered in a new era, in which Hong Kong film makers produced films with a global audience in mind, rather than an Asian one. Though most talk at the time was of the gorgeously choreographed fight sequences, what one is struck by on re-watching Crouching Tiger… now is how emotionally deep it is. Telling the tale of a deadly sword-for-hire (Chow Yun Fat) and his frustrated desire to settle down with a female warrior played by Michelle Yeoh, it is as much about repressed emotion and thwarted love as it is about fighting. It took home awards worldwide, from the Best Foreign Language Film statue at the Oscars to the Best Film prize at the Hong Kong Film awards.