TAIPEI, July 19 (CCTV) – Actress Cheng Pei-pei, popularly known as the “Queen of martial arts films,” died on Wednesday in the United States at the age of 78, her Hong Kong agent announced on Friday.
Hong Kong-based Supreme Art Entertainment said in a Facebook post on Friday that Cheng, whose career spanned six decades, was a versatile actress who gained fame starring in several hit period films in the genre known as “wuxia.”
The agency said Chen had been in poor health in recent years but decided not to make her health public in order to spend more time with her family. It did not provide details about her health condition in its statement.
Meanwhile, in its article about Chen's death, The Hollywood Reporter quoted another Facebook post in which Chen's children said, “The rumors are true. Our mother, Cheng Pei-pei, passed away peacefully at home on July 17th surrounded by her loved ones.”
“In 2019, our mother was diagnosed with neurodegenerative, atypical Parkinsonian syndrome, informally known as Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD),” read a post on Chen's Facebook page just minutes after the representative's statement.
Born in Shanghai in 1946, Chen was dubbed the “Queen of martial arts films” by the media in the 1960s due to the success of martial arts films produced by Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers Studios, such as Hu Chin-quan's 1966 film The Great Drunkard.
In Hu's film, Cheng played the lead role of a female martial artist on a mission to rescue her younger brother who has been kidnapped by bandits, establishing the director's unique style of storytelling and a new style of martial arts film.
She left the film industry after marrying a Taiwanese businessman in 1970 and moving to the United States, but returned to acting after their divorce in 1987.
Cheng continued to be a prolific actress after her return, winning Best Supporting Actress at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2001 for her role as Jade Fox in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Her most recent film role was as “The Matchmaker” in Disney's 2020 live-action remake of Mulan, and her other notable film appearances include the 2014 British drama Lilting opposite Ben Whishaw and Meditation Park opposite Sandra Oh, the latter of which opened the 2017 Vancouver International Film Festival.
Chen also appeared on stage in 2015, playing a street vendor who believes her husband has been abducted by aliens in “A Grain of Sand, in a Far-Away Planet,” a performance by director Stan Lai at the Taiwan-based Performance Workshop Lai Shengchuan Theatre in Shanghai.
“You need physical strength to do scenes in wuxia films. I'm not young anymore. Maybe I'd be better off doing a stage play,” she said at a press conference the day after the film's premiere in the Chinese city.
