Personal Life
Chow was born in Hong Kong, to a mother who was a cleaning lady and vegetable farmer, and a father who worked on a Shell Oil Company tanker. Of Hakka origins, he grew up in a farming community on Lamma Island in a house with no electricity. He woke up at dawn each morning to help his mother sell herbal jelly and Hakka tea-pudding on the streets and in the afternoons he went to work in the fields. His family moved to Kowloon when he was ten. At seventeen, he quit school to help support the family by doing odd jobs including bellboy, postman, camera salesman, and taxi driver. His life started to change when he responded to a newspaper advertisement and his actor-trainee application was accepted by TVB, the local television station. He signed a three-year contract with the studio and made his acting debut. With his striking good looks and easy-going style, Chow became a heartthrob and a familiar face in soap operas that were exported internationally.
Chow has been married twice; first in 1983, to Candice Yu (Chinese: 余安安; pinyin: Yú Ānan), an actress from Asia Television Limited; the marriage lasted nine months. In 1986, Chow married Singaporean Jasmine Tan (simplified Chinese: 陈萫莲; traditional Chinese: 陳薈蓮; pinyin: Chén huilián). Currently, the couple have no children, although Chow has a goddaughter, Celine Ng, a former child model for Chickeeduck and other companies.
Read more about this topic: Chow Yun-fat
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