Hong Kong action film star Cheng Pei-pei dies aged 78

nme.com:

Variety today (July 19), Cheng had long suffered from a degenerative brain disease and has donated her brain to medical research.Best known for her high-octane martial arts films, Cheng’s breakout role was in 1966’s Come Drink With Me by director King Hu.

She spent the majority of the following decade or so starring in several significant Hong Kong action films — she then stepped out of the spotlight after 1974 when she moved to California to raise her family.After a handful of roles in the 1980s, she resumed her acting career, starting with 1993’s Flirting Scholar.

She would make a cameo in 1994’s Wing Chun, which starred a then-rising Michelle Yeoh. The two would go on to work together on the award-winning 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where she played villain Jade Fox.Having been through the development of Hong Kong cinema since the 1960s, Cheng remembered how it “wasn’t uncommon” for women to take on lead acting roles. “Compared to the male actors, directors were overprotective of us,” she told Time Out Hong Kong in 2015. “But, I didn’t need any special treatment.

I’m very proud, and competitive to a fault. I thought, ‘if a man can do it, so can I’.”In the same interview, she noted how the tides turned during the 1970s – around the same time as her move to California and brief retirement from acting: “Around the time of Ricky Hui, men started taking the lead and women became wallflowers.