Tony Leung Chiu-wai is one of the world’s greatest actors, whose net worth comes from the success of his phenomenal body of work spanning four decades.
On 3 September 2023, the Hong Kong acting legend received a Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement Award at the 80th Venice Film Festival. It was a moment that shone the spotlight on his journey from a TV star to a universally acknowledged cinematic performer.
What made the moment unforgettable were the tears that the 61-year-old Leung shed when receiving the award as the attendees at the prestigious film festival gave a long-standing ovation.
Ahead of the ceremony, Leung told reporters that it was acting which helped him overcome his shyness. After receiving the award, he told Reuters TV that it was “like a dream come true”.
However, prestigious honours are not something that Leung has a dearth of. He was named the Asian Filmmaker of the Year by the Busan International Film Festival in 2022 and has won seven Hong Kong Film Awards apart from his seven nominations for acting, three Golden Horse Awards and four nominations, and a Cannes Best Actor award.
Leung is married to Carina Lau, one of the greatest female superstars in Hong Kong cinema. Together since the late 1980s, the two got married in Bhutan in 2008.
Everything about Tony Leung Chiu-wai
A look at his early life
A picture of his younger self Tony Leung Chiu-wai posted on Instagram. (Image credit: Tony Leung Chiu Wai/@tonyleung_official/Instagram)
Tony Leung Chiu-wai came from a “broken home”, as he revealed in an interview with The Guardian in 2004. He said that it was possibly the reason behind his mournful appearance, making people think that he always looks sad.
“I wasn’t so happy in my childhood. My parents broke up when I was six. Before [that], I was a very active, naughty child, but after my father left me I stopped talking. I became very good at hiding my emotions. I felt so ashamed of telling others that I didn’t have a father because that was not common in the 1960s. People didn’t break up — even if they didn’t love each other — in traditional Chinese families. Not like today,” he said.
His mother raised Leung and his sister, Laura, singlehandedly, for which the actor has often said he considers his mother his hero.
When he was around 16, he met Stephen Chow. The Kung Fu Hustle (2004) filmmaker was then around the same age as Leung and yet to become the comedy legend he is today. It was Chow who advised Leung to take up acting.
Leung enrolled in an actors’ training course for a year with Cantonese-language television company TVB Jade at around the age of 19. This experience helped him open up.
“I found a way to express myself. The others thought I was playing a character, but actually, I was living behind the character. I could release my emotions, and the others didn’t know that was me. That’s the reason I love acting so much. I wasn’t asking for fame or money — it was the natural high I got addicted to,” he told The Guardian.
Recalling those days during the press conference ahead of his Venice Film Festival honour, Leung said, “I started my career in a TV station in Hong Kong. That time was the golden period of television. So, I did a lot of TV series and had a chance to watch all kinds of TV. [That’s why] I can do comedy, drama and action.”
He said that his training helped him shift from comedy to drama to art films during the golden era of Hong Kong movies in the 1990s.
The greatest movies of Tony Leung Chiu-wai
Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Maggie Cheung in Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love. (Image credit: IMDb)
The movie career of Tony Leung Chiu-wai began in 1983 with the Shaw Brothers’ comedy Mad, Mad 83. Over the next six years, he established himself as a top dramatic star with films such as Love Unto Waste (1986), which earned him his first Hong Kong Film Award nomination for acting, People’s Hero (1987), which marked his first win at Hong Kong Film Award in the best supporting actor category, and My Heart is That Eternal Rose (1989).
The Taiwanese film A City of Sadness (1989) propelled him to global stardom. Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien, the drama won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival that same year. Leung played a deaf-mute doctor and photographer, who supports a guerrilla rebellion against the government.
Leung never looked back following the critical success of A City of Sadness. It was the first of the three films starring him that won the Golden Lion at Venice, the other two being Vietnamese-born French filmmaker Tr?n Anh H?ng’s Cyclo (1995) and Taiwanese auteur Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (2007).
Tony Leung and Tang Wei in Lust, Caution. (Image credit: IMDb)
After a string of comedy films, Leung achieved stardom with John Woo’s 1992 action classic Hard Boiled alongside Hong Kong icon Chow Yun-fat.
Two years later, Leung played the lead role in Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express (1994). The film earned Leung his first Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actor and his first Golden Horse Award for Best Actor. It wasn’t their first film together, a tag that would go to Days of Being Wild (1990) in which Leung played a small part among greats such as Andy Lau, Maggie Cheung and the inimitable Leslie Cheung.
Over the decades, the association of Leung and Wong has become one of the finest director-actor pairings of all time. Together, they have created cinematic masterpieces such as Ashes of Time (1994), Happy Together (1997), In the Mood for Love (2000), 2046 (2004) and The Grandmaster (2013). For his role in In the Mood for Love, Leung won the Best Actor at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.
In between, he also starred in movies that appealed to a wider international audience. These include films such as Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs and Chinese auteur Zhang Yimou’s wuxia masterpiece Hero (both 2002).
Tony Leung pulls a gun at Andy Lau’s character in Infernal Affairs. (Image credit: (C) 2002 – Miramax/IMDb)
Infernal Affairs was later remade in Hollywood by Martin Scorsese into the Academy Award-winning film The Departed (2006). Hero, on the other hand, is hailed as one of the greatest films starring martial arts legend Jet Li.
In recent years, Leung has worked in films such as the romantic comedy See You Tomorrow (2016), crime thriller Where the Wind Blows (2022), and espionage thriller Hidden Blade (2023).
Among his upcoming movies is the 2023 crime thriller The Goldfinger, which will reunite him with his Infernal Affairs co-star Andy Lau. He is also preparing for his first European film, Silent Friend. Directed by Hungarian directing icon Ildik? Enyedi, the film will see Leung play a neuroscientist.
“I plan to spend like eight months (preparing for it)… I have no idea about what neuroscience is. So I have to read a lot of books and I have to do a lot of university hopping,” he said at the 2023 Venice Film Festival.
He was also recently seen in the music video of “Cool With You” by K-pop group NewJeans alongside Squid Game star HoYeon Jung.
Tony Leung Chiu-wai in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Leung as Xu Wenwu in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. (Image credit: (C) Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved./IMDb)
Almost 30 years after making his film debut, Tony Leung Chiu-wai chose his Hollywood break with the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021).
Hailed as the first MCU film with an Asian superhero, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings earned USD 432 million worldwide.
The titular role was played by Simu Liu. Leung played Shang-Chi’s father Xu Wenwu, who is the main antagonist of the movie, the leader of a criminal empire, and the original wielder of the powerful Ten Rings.
Net worth of Tony Leung Chiu-wai
Tony Leung in a post wishing Year of The Tiger to his fans. (Image credit: Tony Leung Chiu Wai/@tonyleung_official/Instagram)
It is the success of Shang-Chi and the financial information available around it that helps make an estimate of the net worth of Tony Leung Chiu-wai.
According to multiple media reports, including KoreaBoo, Leung was paid USD 7.7 million (around HKD 60 million) for playing Wenwu.
The payment he received was the second-highest for any actor appearing in an MCU film for the first time. At the time, Cate Blanchett was reportedly paid the most with around USD 12.4 million for playing Hela in Thor: Ragnarok (2017).
It is believed that Leung’s pay rose following the success of Shang-Chi. Some reports suggest that he was paid USD 9.2 million for Hidden Blade.
There is no substantive information about Leung’s career earnings in Hong Kong cinema over the decades. Celebrity Net Worth, which tracks wealth information about celebrities, says that Tony Leung Chiu-wai has accumulated wealth of around USD 20 million in his career.
How Tony Leung Chiu-wai spends his money
Citing various reports, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reveals that Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Carina Lau own several properties in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
The net worth of Tony Leung’s wife Carina Lau is also very high. Though unconfirmed, some reports suggest that Lau’s personal wealth is around USD 60 million largely due to her success as an entrepreneur, restaurateur, and fashion brand owner. Her businesses have a presence in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai.
Leung invests in real estate and has reportedly also rented out his properties, besides flipping them on the market such as a flat he owned on Wellington Street, which he sold for USD 12.7 million four years after buying it for just USD 3.7 million.
He also owns a flat with a balcony in Repulse Bay worth an estimated USD 8.5 million and a house with a garden at 15 Watford Road.
In 2016, Leung bought two offices in Wong Chuk Hang’s W50 commercial building. Reports suggest the offices are worth USD 12.8 million.
On the other hand, Carina Lau’s mansion in Hong Kong is worth an estimated USD 25.5 million. Lau also reportedly owns costly items such as an antique Qing dynasty vase auctioned in 2017 for around USD 6.6 million and a Cartier 12-carat wedding ring worth USD 1.3 million. The ceremony in Bhutan is believed to have cost around USD 4 million.
Leung has often been spotted in luxury cars. His favourite is perhaps a Range Rover Sport SUV, which SCMP says is at least 15 years old. The current price of a 2023 model in the line starts at USD 83,000 and can go up to USD 121,500.
He also owns a Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Coup? Black Series with a 6.2-litre V8 M156 KE63 engine. The car was produced in limited numbers from 2011 to 2013. The C63 AMG Coup? Black Series is today considered a prized collectible.
Leung is also fond of waterskiing and surfing. He has participated in sailing competitions in Hong Kong. In May 2018, Leung won second prize at the Spring Regatta held at Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong with his team on his yacht, Davinloong.
Image credit: Tony Leung Chiu Wai/@tonyleung_official/Instagram
“I love the sea and the nature. I have always wanted to sail a boat, even as a child. But it was not until last year that I had the chance to practise,” he told the media at the time.
The Guardian‘s 2004 interview revealed that Leung spends most of his time at home or on his boat. It is, however, not clear if the boat referred to in the article was a sailing vessel or a luxury yacht and whether Leung still owns it.
(Hero and Featured images: Tony Leung Chiu Wai/@tonyleung_official/Instagram)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
– How rich is Tony Leung?
Tony Leung Chiu-wai has a net worth of around USD 20 million. His wife, Hong Kong actor-entrepreneur Carina Lau has a net worth of USD 61 million.
– How old is Tony Leung?
Tony Leung is 61 years old as of 2023.
