Sammo Hung

The Boy Who Learned Through Beatings

Sammo Hung Kam-bo was born in Hong Kong in 1952, and his parents sent him to the China Drama Academy when he was just seven years old. There, master Yu Jim-yuen enforced a physical training regime that would be considered torture in any civilized country. Caning was the only way to correct a badly executed jump or a hand stance that wasn't perfect.

He was part of the Seven Little Fortunes group alongside other children who would go on to become stars, such as Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao. That childhood of deprivation and extreme acrobatics gave him an agility that defied all physical logic. Despite his heavy build, Hung moved with the speed of a featherweight.

Discipline was the only path.

In 1971, he began working as a stunt coordinator for the production company Golden Harvest. His talent for staging large-scale fight scenes caught the attention of Bruce Lee, who was then the undisputed king of martial arts cinema. So in 1973, Lee asked him to open the film Enter the Dragon with an exhibition fight that changed the rules of contact action cinema.

The Horror That Jumped at the Box Office

Hung didn't want to limit himself to carrying out other directors' ideas. In 1980 he directed Encounters of the Spooky Kind and practically single-handedly founded a new genre that blended the most outrageous slapstick with the folk horror of hopping vampires. Hong Kong audiences responded with enormous lines that wrapped around the blocks outside the cinemas.

During the 1980s, his production company Bo Ho Films was the real engine of the local industry. He shot Wheels on Meals in Barcelona in 1984, where he choreographed a fight against kickboxing champion Benny Urquidez. But his greatest achievement was maintaining a frantic work pace that often exceeded three films a year between producing and acting.

And his body held up.

In 1998 he attempted an assault on the American market with the TV series Martial Law. The ratings were immediate in the first seasons, but Hollywood never quite figured out what to do with a leading man of his physical profile. So he returned to Asia to focus on the technical direction of big-budget blockbusters that needed his rigor.

The Knees of a War Veteran

His work on Ip Man in 2008 revived worldwide interest in Wing Chun style. He gave Donnie Yen's movements a visual punch that the genre had lost to an excess of wires and digital effects. He designed every blow so that the viewer could feel the impact from their seat.

But decades of falls onto concrete and jumps from second-story heights took their toll on his joints. In 2017 he had to undergo knee surgery that permanently limited his mobility. Since then, he is often seen on film sets supervising action scenes from a wheelchair or leaning on a wooden cane.

Nobody dares to complain on his set.

In April 2024, he received the lifetime achievement award at the 42nd Hong Kong Film Awards. That same year he appeared as an actor in the film Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In under the direction of Soi Cheang. The final budget for this production reached 300 million Hong Kong dollars.