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| Star's Suicide Leap Staff reporters. The Standard -Hong Kong One of Asia's best-loved Cantopop singers and actors, Leslie Cheung, plunged to his death yesterday from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Central. A police spokeswoman refused to fully identify the dead man, saying only that a 46-year-old, surnamed Cheung, had died in hospital after falling from a hotel in Central. Cheung had fallen from a high floor, crashed through fences on the podium and onto Connaught Road. He was taken to the Queen Mary Hospital where he was certified dead at 7.06 pm. Hotel staff had seen Cheung using a gym on the 24th floor at about 4pm. He was said to be alone at the time. A note Cheung had left with the concierge said he was experiencing ``emotional problems''. Chantal Hooper, a spokeswoman for the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, said Cheung was neither a guest nor a member of the gym. ``He only entered the gym as a visitor,'' she said. Cheung, the youngest of 10 children, was born in 1956. He became acquainted with the movie world at an early age because his father was tailor to American actors William Holden, Marlon Brando and Alfred Hitchcock. Holden was then a frequent visitor to Hong Kong, making such films as Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing and The World Of Suzie Wong. When his parents divorced, he was sent to England to further his studies and went to Leeds University, where he graduated in textile management. Cheung began his showbiz career in 1976 after finishing runner-up in the Asian Music Contest. He became a hit among local fans with the success of his album The Wind Blows On in 1981. In 1986 he gained a reputation as an actor of great promise when he played a rookie cop alongside movie icon Chow Yun-fat in director John Woo's movie A Better Tomorrow. Three years later he stunned the music scene when he announced the end of his singing career, a decision he was to reverse in 1997 ``by popular demand''. In the 1990 Hong Kong Film Awards, he was named best actor for his role in Days Of Being Wild, which was directed by Wong Kar-wai. Cheung also won the Grand Prize at Cannes Film Festival in 1993 for his role as an opera singer in the historical drama Farewell, My Concubine. But his most controversial performance was in the 1997 movie Happy Together in which he and actor Tony Leung played a pair of gay lovers stranded in Buenos Aries. The movie won international acclaim. Radio Television Hong Kong presented Cheung with a Gold Needle Award in 2000 for his ``enormous contribution to Hong Kong's music industry''. The same year, he wowed audiences around Asia with the Leslie Cheung Passion Tour in which he wore outrageous costumes, including women's dresses. There were reports that Cheung began ``behaving abnormally'' last year after he starred in a local horror film, Inner Senses. This was to be the last of his 60 local films. He said he was merely going through a ``mood fluctuation''. Openly gay, there were claims that Cheung's affair with companion Daffy Tong had encountered problems early this year. He denied this. |
| www.goodbyeleslie.com |
| www.goodbyeleslie.com |