Eddie Cheung Siu-Fai 张兆辉
In Hong Kong thrillers, Eddie Cheung often needs only a few scenes for the audience to understand exactly what kind of man they are dealing with. In Throw Down he plays a loan shark ready to take on anyone at anything, while in Election he is a stuttering triad lawyer who gets called in when matters are too complicated for a street brawl. TVB viewers knew Cheung long before these films. In 2020 he once again took the lead role in one of the channel's series, Of Greed And Ants. His Wing Mo-Tun arrives from Thailand, claws his way into Hong Kong's upper circles and over time grows used to deciding other people's fates.
Eddie Cheung was born on 4 February 1963 in Hong Kong. He was the fourth of five children and grew up in Sha Tin, in a squatter village near Mei Lam. In an interview with HK01, Cheung recalled that his father made rattan furniture at home. In another interview, he said his father worked as a butcher and was strict about making sure his children kept their word. His older brothers and sisters were already working while Eddie was still in school. The children made their own toys, caught small fish in the river, and could spend all day with a battered ball. Eddie dreamed of becoming a footballer and toyed with the idea of joining the police. It was a schoolteacher who pointed him toward television, suggesting he try out for the TVB acting classes. Cheung paid twenty Hong Kong dollars for the application, figuring that at least the money would get him a look at the TV studio. He was accepted, but the course lasted a full year and paid nothing. His older sister offered him two hundred dollars a month for food and transport. Without her, Cheung said in the HK01 interview, he would never have gone.
In 1982 Cheung graduated from TVB's eleventh acting class, where his fellow students included Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Francis Ng. At first he was given bit parts. In 1983 he landed a steady job on the morning broadcast, showing viewers how to do exercises. He thought he would be leading the workouts for a year, but his bosses were pleased with his work and he ended up staying for three. In 1985 he was cast in the sitcom Hong Kong 1981-1986 as the son of Leung Biu-Ching's character, and the very next year he played lead roles in the police series Siblings of Vice and Virtue and in The Turbulent Decade. In The Turbulent Decade he played a fresh graduate looking for work and, as he recalled himself, felt completely natural in the part.
Later the Hong Kong press wrote about a car accident early in his television career. According to an HK01 account published in 2022, Cheung, driving away from a public event, struck a fan who was trying to get an autograph. The publication reported that the injured man died of his injuries. Cheung continued to appear frequently on TVB, though over time the lead roles grew fewer. He was usually offered policemen and rich men, and when the series Cold Blood Warm Heart gave him a gangster nicknamed Big Fai, he decided to try something new. He borrowed the way the man spoke and carried himself from someone he had met on the street. After two nights of shooting, the producer said Cheung was overacting next to his co-stars and asked him to go back to his usual manner.
Cheung first met Johnnie To back in television, and in 1993 he appeared in To's The Bare-Footed Kid. Judging by the HK01 interview, Cheung left TVB around 2002, after nearly twenty years at the channel. An earlier Phoenix publication gives 2001. Cheung hoped to spend more time with his children and help his wife run her beauty salons. By his account, shooting a twenty-episode drama sometimes left him with only two hours of sleep, and at home he was barely seen for weeks at a time. Meanwhile To, in Canada, rented the series The Heaven Sword & the Dragon Sabre 2000, saw Cheung as Yang Xiao and, on his return, offered him the part of an inspector in Running on Karma (2003). Cheung agreed. Film work let him be home more often. For his role as this sharp, quick-to-punish policeman, he was nominated for a Hong Kong Film Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In Throw Down (2004), Cheung plays a loan shark as if the man has forgotten what money is even for. For him, every encounter is an excuse to start a game, and, as noted in the HKCinema review, he is ready to take on even a child with the same relish. For this role, Cheung was nominated for a Taiwanese Golden Horse Award as Best Supporting Actor. In Breaking News the same year, he played one of the police chiefs, and in Election (2005) and Election 2 (2006), a lawyer in the entourage of triad bosses. Cheung recalled how on the set of Election, To gave instructions to him, Nick Cheung and Tony Leung Ka-Fai almost without naming names. Each of them guessed from gestures and a few words what the director wanted from him.
Among Cheung's small roles for To, one of the most memorable is one of the seven personalities of the policeman played by Gordon Lam in Mad Detective (2007). Before the eyes of Lau Ching-Wan's character, the suspect changes guises, and Cheung plays the one who is ready to kill. The same year, in Kidnap, he again played a policeman. The HKCinema reviewer, who found the thriller itself assembled from clichés, singled out how much charm Cheung managed to give this thoroughly standard character. In Drug War (festival premiere in 2012, release in 2013), To again gathered many actors from his Hong Kong films. Cheung played one of the drug dealers.
In 2011, Cheung returned to TVB and appeared in the sitcom Til Love Do Us Lie. For the role of a special forces instructor in Sniper Standoff (2013), he seriously took up physical training, and a year later he played his first leading role in a film. According to Cheung, director Maggie To had written this role in Twilight Online for him from the very beginning. He again plays a policeman, who this time has to deal with reports of a ghost in a residential estate. For this work, he received Best Actor awards at two American independent film competitions – IndieFEST and Accolade Global Film Competition.
When agreeing to shoot on the mainland, Cheung at first weighed how much time he would have to spend away from home. By the mid-2010s, his children had grown up, and he began accepting such offers more often. In the series Bei Shang Guang Bu Xiang Xin Yan Lei (2015), he played a boss accustomed to getting his way by any means, and in the fantasy Fighter of the Destiny (2017), the head of a religious order. In Hong Kong at that time, meanwhile, he could also be seen in a far more intimate role. In one of the segments of the anthology Good Take! (2016), Cheung plays with great tenderness the father of a boy who in his fantasies sees his parents back together.
In Guilt by Design (2019), Cheung played a policeman who forces Nick Cheung's character to influence the jury's verdict. On set, he often had to act alone in front of the camera. For this role, he received a Golden Lotus as Best Supporting Actor at the Macau Film Festival. A year later, TVB aired the series Of Greed And Ants, in which Cheung played the stock market tycoon Rong Mutong. Cheung liked that his character is convinced of his own righteousness from the very start. As Mutong's fortunes rise, his self-confidence becomes ever more dangerous for those around him.
In 2023, Cheung received his second Golden Lotus in Macau for Best Supporting Actor, playing a gambling industry businessman in Danny Pang Fat's crime actioner Death Stranding. He also appeared in Pang's Deadly Doll (2025), where he played a father who has lost his son. Discussing this work, Cheung said that the farewell scenes could remind him of relatives who had passed away. In 2026, the actor appeared in Mastermind, a police thriller with Louis Koo and Simon Yam.
Cheung and Guo Biyan married in 1997. They have a son and a daughter. In a 2021 interview, Cheung said that for a long time he had felt depressed and that his family helped him cope with it. When the children were small, he drove them to school himself and picked them up after classes. The couple also ran beauty salons together, and in their best years they had five establishments. In an interview with the Singaporean newspaper Lianhe Zaobao, Cheung joked that the only thing he could hide from his wife was a chicken leg eaten the day before a shoot. They have been accustomed to discussing serious matters together.
