Kenny Ho

The Striker Who Ended Up in Court

Kenny Ho never wanted to be an actor. As a young man, he only thought about soccer and even played as a striker for the Hong Kong youth national team. But the death of his grandmother changed his plans, and he ended up studying architecture in England before stepping onto a film set for the first time.

In 1982 he joined the acting academy of the ATV network. His face fit the standards of the era, as he projected a mix of uprightness and physical strength that directors were looking for in martial arts stories.

Football lost a striker, but television gained an unshakable face.

In 1983 he starred in The General alongside actress Rosamund Kwan. It was his first real taste of fame in Hong Kong. But the local industry was a meat grinder, and Ho decided to try his luck in Taiwan a few years later.

The red robe and the weight of steel

The series Justice Bao in 1993 changed his life in a different way. He played Zhan Zhao, the royal bodyguard in a red robe who solved problems with his sword and sense of honor. That Taiwanese production ran for 236 episodes and was watched across half of Asia.

And the gamble paid off.

The series' success was so big that Kenny Ho recorded several Cantopop and Mandopop albums to capitalize on its commercial momentum. His fans couldn't tell the actor apart from the crime-fighting hero on screen. But he knew that fame on television has an expiration date, and he began planning his exit from the recording studios.

In 2009 he returned to his most famous role in a new version of Justice Bao produced in mainland China. He worked again with his former co-stars Jin Chao-chun and Fan Wei-hong to close a chapter that had lasted decades.

Health Factories Instead of Scripts

Kenny Ho stopped prioritizing scripts to focus on business. In 2013 he founded his own healthy products company, KHK, in the city of Huizhou. He invested much of his savings in a plant producing organic food and nutritional supplements.

His screen appearances became scarce from 2014 onward. He preferred to spend his time overseeing the quality of the grains and cereals sold under his brand. The media stopped chasing him for his romances and began asking him about his annual revenue figures.

The entertainment industry became a secondary memory.

In 2021 his Huizhou factory received official certification as an industrial-grade tourist attraction in China. Ho personally oversees the guided tours of his 20,000 square meter production center. The industrial complex generates steady profits that far exceed the best contracts he signed for television in the 1990s.