He married Shu Qi, has a bromance with Daniel Wu: how Hong Kong’s Stephen Fung went from singing to acting to finding his true calling as a director

This is the 19th instalment in a biweekly series profiling major Hong Kong pop culture figures of recent decades.

While it is not uncommon for Hollywood actors to become writers, producers and even directors, the phenomenon is relatively rare in Hong Kong cinema.

Stephen Fung Tak-lun is an exception. At age 49, he seems to have it all: he has proven himself in different fields in showbiz, from acting to singing to directing, and has a loving marriage with actress Shu Qi, whom he has been friends with for 26 years.

Born in 1974 in Hong Kong, Fung is the son of Julie Sek Yin, a notable actress during the Shaw Brothers era in the 1960s. He made his acting debut at 16 after a teacher said he should audition for the Warner Brothers’ television film, Forbidden Nights (1990).

Stephen Fung, pictured in 1998. Photo: SCMP

He did not properly begin his acting career there, however. His parents made sure education came first, and Fung went to the US to study graphic design at the University of Michigan, where he did a film elective. Around 1995, he returned to Hong Kong.

In 1996, he formed the Cantopop group Dry with composer Mark Lui Chung-tak. Though they won a handful of awards, the duo split up in 1998 after their third studio album, as both singers’ respective film and songwriting careers were taking off.

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Several years later, Fung said in an interview that there was “no environment for a healthy music industry in Hong Kong” with genre diversity: “Audiences here do not have tolerance for variety. You would never have a Guns N’ Roses or Metallica here. It’s all mass pop for karaoke, and the range is very narrow.”

Fung was mostly cast in pretty-boy roles at the beginning of his career. His first lead role was as a gay sex worker in Yonfan’s Bishonen (1998) opposite Daniel Wu Yin-cho.
In 1999, the two actor’s screen careers overlapped again when they starred with Nicholas Tse Ting-fung in Benny Chan Muk-sing’s action comedy and box-office success Gen-X Cops.
Mark Lui (left) and Stephen Fung, of Hong Kong pop band Dry, at a performance in 1997. Photo: SCMP
The next year, Fung returned for the sequel Gen-Y Cops. The story was set in Washington and brought in US actor Paul Rudd, now best known for his role as Ant-Man. The film was released under the title Jackie Chan Presents: Metal Mayhem on a US cable channel in 2002, although Jackie Chan does not appear in this movie.

Fung was not fully satisfied with these roles. In a 2004 interview, he said he was not “that fond of” his earlier roles. As it turns out, his passion for film was deeper than that.

Between 2001 and 2002, Fung spent some time in Los Angeles to survey the Hollywood scene, where he was offered mostly stereotypical East Asian roles.

Daniel Wu (left) and Stephen Fung play gay lovers in Bishonen (1998).
While he did not take them, his time in LA did amount to something – he got to meet the likes of director John Woo Yu-sen, action choreographer Dion Lam Tik-on and The Matrix’s martial arts choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, and inspiration came for his directorial debut.
Fung told the Post he used to edit videotapes as a kid in Hong Kong and he made short films with his friends while in the US. In the late 1990s, he directed music videos for Nicholas Tse, Eason Chan Yik-shun and Karen Mok Man-wai – his girlfriend at the time.

“I’m pretty nosy on set. I like to go around and see what everyone is getting up to. So, it was a pretty natural thing, becoming a director. That particular side just kind of grew,” Fung said in 2005.

(From left) Stephen Fung, Sam Lee Chan-sam and Nicholas Tse Ting-fung in a still from Gen-X Cops (1999).

“The next 10 years are my golden years. I want to make the most of them … I just wanted to go back to the basics of the old Hong Kong films I grew up watching.”

Fung’s directorial debut Enter the Phoenix (2004) is a gay gangster comedy featuring Daniel Wu, Chapman To Man-chat and Karen Mok, with cameos by Nicholas Tse, Sammi Cheng Sau-man and Jackie Chan, who helped produce the film. Fung also played a supporting role.

“There was some more confidence in me after my first film,” said Fung while preparing for his second film, the kitschy martial arts comedy House of Fury (2005). “Then I got Yuen Woo-ping involved and that helped get me a larger budget. During a break from working on Kill Bill he’d come to town and seen my first movie and liked it.”

Karen Mok and Stephen Fung at the 25th Hong Kong Film Awards Presentation Ceremony in 2006. Photo: SCMP

Fung’s career continued to diversify. In 2006, he wrote, directed and starred in Stephen’s Diary, a sitcom-format drama series which clocked good ratings on TVB Jade.

In 2007, he was seen meeting with Hollywood big names for potential film projects – there was Tom Cruise in Berlin and Brandon Routh, the then new Superman, in Beijing.

Stephen Fung (right), alongside actress Orla Brady, on the set of Into the Badlands. Photo: Aidan Monaghan/AMC

It was also the year that he went through a major life change, as he and Karen Mok, his girlfriend of nine years, broke up. In response to queries, Fung said: “We hadn’t been putting our relationship in the spotlight when we were dating, why would we do it when we were separated?”

Meanwhile, his filmmaking career continued to blossom and he directed Jump (2009), produced by Stephen Chow Sing-chi. In 2011, he co-founded production company Diversion Pictures with close friend Daniel Wu.
Fung’s other film directing efforts to date include Tai Chi 0 and Tai Chi Hero (both 2012), the first two entries in a never-completed, special-effects-laden martial arts trilogy, and The Adventurers (2017), a glossy yet superficial action adventure movie.
Shu Qi and Stephen Fung announced their engagement in 2016. Photo: Weibo

Around 2012, Fung quietly began dating Shu Qi, whom he had been friends with since they met on the set of Bishonen in the late 1990s. The celebrity couple married in a small, casual ceremony in Europe in 2016 and they have stayed low-key ever since.

In 2015, Fung worked as executive producer, director and action director on US martial arts series Into the Badlands, again starring Wu. In 2019, Fung served as executive producer on Netflix’s Wu Assassins (2019), for which he directed the first two episodes.

Although Hollywood could not provide him with the appropriate opportunities in the early 2000s, it looks like Fung forged a new path for himself and got there anyway.

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