Kenneth Tsang Kong (
Traditional ChineseTraditional Chinese characters are the two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han Dynasty, and have been more or less stable since the 5th century The retronym...
: 曾江; born 1938) is a Hong Kong actor. Tsang's career has spanned 50 years and included a variety of acting roles.
Tsang was born in
Hong KongHong Kong , officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is a highly autonomous territory of the People's Republic of China, facing Guangdong to the north and the South China Sea to the east, west and south...
with family roots in
ZhongshanZhongshan is a prefecture-level city in the south of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province in southern China.-History:...
,
GuangdongGuangdong is a province on the southern coast of People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...
. He attended
high schoolHigh school is the name used in some parts of the world, particularly in Scotland, Northern America and Oceania, to describe an institution that provides all or part of secondary education...
in
TexasTexas is the second-largest U.S. state in both area and population, and the largest state in the contiguous United States.The name had wide usage among native Americans, meaning "friends" or "allies"...
,
U.S.The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and received a degree in architecture from the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley is a public research university located in Berkeley, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines...
. He returned to Hong Kong in the early 1960s but was bored by the work. His older sister, Jeanette Lin Tsui (林翠) was a film star at the time and provided Tsang with several connections in the industry which boosted his acting career.
Kenneth Tsang Kong (
Traditional ChineseTraditional Chinese characters are the two standard sets of printed Chinese characters. The modern shapes of traditional Chinese characters first appeared with the emergence of the clerical script during the Han Dynasty, and have been more or less stable since the 5th century The retronym...
: 曾江; born 1938) is a Hong Kong actor. Tsang's career has spanned 50 years and included a variety of acting roles.
Tsang was born in
Hong KongHong Kong , officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is a highly autonomous territory of the People's Republic of China, facing Guangdong to the north and the South China Sea to the east, west and south...
with family roots in
ZhongshanZhongshan is a prefecture-level city in the south of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province in southern China.-History:...
,
GuangdongGuangdong is a province on the southern coast of People's Republic of China. The province was previously often written with the alternative English name Kwangtung Province...
. He attended
high schoolHigh school is the name used in some parts of the world, particularly in Scotland, Northern America and Oceania, to describe an institution that provides all or part of secondary education...
in
TexasTexas is the second-largest U.S. state in both area and population, and the largest state in the contiguous United States.The name had wide usage among native Americans, meaning "friends" or "allies"...
,
U.S.The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and received a degree in architecture from the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley is a public research university located in Berkeley, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines...
. He returned to Hong Kong in the early 1960s but was bored by the work. His older sister, Jeanette Lin Tsui (林翠) was a film star at the time and provided Tsang with several connections in the industry which boosted his acting career. In the media, Lin Tsui was always presented as Tsang's younger sister instead as it was moreover uncommon for female stars to reveal their age.
Tsang's film debut was in the movie
The Feud (1955), when he was just 16, which was followed by a role in
Who Isn't Romantic? (1956). In the mid 1960s, Tsang starred in detective films and classic kung fu movies with (at the time) Hong Kong teen idols
Connie Chan Po-chuConnie Chan Po-chu was born in 1947 to impoverished parents, one of at least nine siblings, in Guangdong, China. To increase their children's chances of survival, Chan's birth parents gave away some of their youngest to other families. As a result, Chan was adopted by Chan Fei-nung and his wife,...
and
Josephine SiaoJosephine Siao Fong-Fong MBE is a Hong Kong movie star who became popular as a child and continued her success as a mature actress, winning numerous awards including best actress at the 1995 Berlin Film Festival...
. Tsang also appeared in a few Wong Fei-Hung movies in the late 1960s. In the 1986, Tsang worked as taxi cab owner, Ken, in
John Woo'sJohn Woo Yu-Sen is a Chinese film director and producer from Hong Kong. Recognized for his stylized films of highly choreographed action sequences, Mexican standoffs, and use of slow-motion, Woo has directed several notable Hong Kong action films, among them, A Better Tomorrow, Hard Boiled, and...
A Better TomorrowA Better Tomorrow is a 1986 Hong Kong action film which had a profound influence on the Hong Kong movie-making industry, and later on an international scale.Directed by John Woo, it stars Chow Yun-Fat, Ti Lung and Leslie Cheung...
. Subsequent collaborations with Woo included the role of Ken in
A Better Tomorrow 2A Better Tomorrow 2 is a 1987 Hong Kong action film, which is a follow-up to its popular predecessor, A Better Tomorrow. A Better Tomorrow 2 is notoriously known for its over-the-top violence, exaggerated blood and gore and body counts nearing the hundreds...
in 1987, police officer
Danny Lee'sDanny Lee Sau-Yin is a Hong Kong actor, film producer, screenwriter, director, action director and presenter. He is best known for frequently portraying Hong Kong police officers in films such as Law With Two Phases, The Killer and The Untold Story.-Background:Lee did not do so well in school and...
murdered partner in
The Killer in 1989, and the strict adoptive father of
Chow Yun-FatChow Yun-Fat SBS is a Hong Kong Film Award-winning actor. He is best known in Asia for his collaboration with filmmaker John Woo in heroic bloodshed genre films A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard-Boiled; and to the West for his role as Li Mu-bai in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon...
,
Leslie CheungLeslie Cheung Kwok-Wing , nicknamed elder brother , was a film actor and musician from Hong Kong. Cheung was considered as "One of the founding fathers of Cantopop," and "combining a hugely successful film and music career".In 2000, Cheung was named Asian Biggest Superstar by China Central...
and
Cherie ChungCherie Chung Chor-hung is a retired Hong Kong film actress. Of Hakka descent, she participated in the Miss Hong Kong competition but won nothing. She was later discovered by film director Johnnie To and debuted in his first film The Enigmatic Case .Her beauty and charm helped her become one of the...
in
Once a ThiefOnce a Thief is a 1991 Hong Kong action-comedy film written and directed by John Woo. It stars Chow Yun-Fat, Leslie Cheung, Cherie Chung, Kenneth Tsang and Paul Chu Kong in a lighthearted heist themed action-comedy routine....
in 1991.
Up to this point, Tsang had played roles in mainly Hong Kong movies. His first Hollywood film was
The Replacement KillersThe Replacement Killers is a 1998 American action film, directed by Antoine Fuqua in his directorial debut. It stars Chow Yun-Fat and Mira Sorvino...
(1998), also the Hollywood debut of co-star
Chow Yun-FatChow Yun-Fat SBS is a Hong Kong Film Award-winning actor. He is best known in Asia for his collaboration with filmmaker John Woo in heroic bloodshed genre films A Better Tomorrow, The Killer, and Hard-Boiled; and to the West for his role as Li Mu-bai in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon...
. Tsang appeared alongside Chow once again in
Anna and the KingAnna and the King is a 1999 motion picture loosely based on Anna and the King of Siam, the story of Anna Leonowens, who was an English schoolteacher in Siam, now Thailand, in the 19th century...
as well as
Jackie ChanJackie Chan, SBS, MBE is a Hong Kong actor, action choreographer, filmmaker, comedian, producer, martial artist, screenwriter, entrepreneur, singer and stunt performer....
in
Rush Hour 2Rush Hour 2 is a 2001 martial arts/buddy cop film. This is the second installment in the Rush Hour film series. A sequel to the 1998 film Rush Hour, the film stars Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker who respectively reprise their roles as Inspector Lee and Los Angeles police detective James Carter...
. Tsang played General Moon in the
James BondJames Bond 007 is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. The character has also been used in the longest running and most financially successful English language film franchise to date, starting in 1962 with Dr...
film
Die Another DayDie Another Day is the twentieth spy film in the James Bond series, and the fourth and last to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. In the pre-title sequence, Bond leads a mission to North Korea, during which he is found out and, after killing a rogue North Korean colonel, he...
(2002), and he continues to appear in films from his native Hong Kong.
Tsang's is currently married to Jiao Jiao (焦姣), a Chinese actress.