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Actress Chen Peipei is survived by her four children and grandchildren.
CNN
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Actress Chen Pei-Pei, best known for her martial arts roles in films like Come Drink with Me and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, has died. She was 78 years old.
“It is with heavy hearts that we announce that the rumors are true. Our mother, Cheng Pei-pei, passed away peacefully at home on July 17th, surrounded by her loved ones,” her family said in a statement posted to Facebook on Friday.
They revealed that she lives with a rare, progressive disease called corticobasal degeneration (CBD). Over time, the disease causes brain cells to become damaged and die, worsening problems with movement, speech, memory and swallowing, according to the UK's National Health Service website. There is currently no known treatment to stop the progression.
“She has chosen not to make this news public in order to deal with her medical condition privately and spend the remaining time she has with her children and grandchildren,” the statement read.
“We would like to thank all her friends, colleagues and fans for your support of our mother over the years. Our mother would have wanted to be remembered as a legendary martial arts queen and a versatile, award-winning actress who worked in film and television for more than 60 years, both in Asia and internationally,” the statement continued.
Born in Shanghai in 1946, Cheng trained in ballet at school before moving to Hong Kong as a teenager.
She then enrolled in a performing arts training course at Shaw Brothers Studio, a film production company that pioneered kung fu films, according to the Hong Kong Film Database (HKMDB) website.
This led to Chen's solid acting career in Shaw Brothers films, where she played a dancer in the 1964 historical drama The Last Shang Dynasty and an actress in the 1964 romance film The Lover's Stone.
Her breakthrough came two years later, when she played a skilled martial artist in the action-crime classic Come Drink with Me.
Chen later married and emigrated to the United States in 1971. She and her husband had four children but eventually divorced.
She returned to Hong Kong in the 1990s and later played the villain fighter Jade Fox in the 2000 Oscar-winning action-adventure film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, according to the HKMDB.
“I'm always up for a fight,” Chen told Time Out magazine in 2015. “It's exhilarating. I've always been an active person, so when the opportunity to do a fight scene came up, I was happy to take it.”
Her last role was as the matchmaker in the 2020 live-action film “Mulan.”
