Cheng Pei Pei

from Hong Kong Cinema - View from the Brooklyn Bridge
Cheng Pei Pei. The name has such a ring to it. She was the first modern day action film heroine and is revered by many to this day. Though her major films were in the 1960's, she still acts from time to time and just had a major part in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as the evil Jade Fox.

She was trained in dancing more than the martial arts (as of course were many of the action heroines - Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Khan and Moon Lee) but was interested in acting and graduated from the Southern Screen Experimental Theater in 1963 and was hired by the Shaw Brothers. Under the Shaw Brothers she acted in musicals and dramas until she was chosen by a little known director (at that time) named King Hu to star in his film Come Drink with Me.
(After seeing the deliriously fun 'Hong Kong Nocturne' I lament the fact that she didn't do more musicals. -Ed.)

King Hu was of course to completely revitalize the martial arts genre over the next 10 years and like Tsui Hark who was to follow enjoyed giving prominent action roles to females. In Come Drink with Me, Cheng Pei Pei plays Golden Swallow, a remarkably swift and deadly swordswoman and her performance is simply dazzling. She is so graceful and charismatic that you get totally swept up with this lone woman taking on and defeating much greater forces. The scene in the inn and the one at the temple are the stuff of legend.
Pei Pei reprised this role in the film Golden Swallow (a.k.a. The Girl with the Thunderbolt Kick) but under director Chang Cheh the focus shifted to a male (as was his wont) Jimmy Wang Yu. Some other action films of hers are: Shadow Whip, Whiplash, Kung Fu Girl, Jade Raksha and Flying Dagger. By the mid-70's she had basically retired from the film business and at one time even had a cooking show on TV in Los Angeles during the 80's. Some of her rare film appearances afterwards were - a small cameo in Wing Chun as Michelle Yeoh's sifu, as the competing head of a Peking Opera school in Painted Faces (1988) and she had a terrific part in Stephen Chow's Flirting Scholar.

Cheng Pei Pei has a daughter who has recently decided to follow in her mother’s professional footsteps.