Chow Yun-Fat

Chow often is seen with a trademark toothpick in his mouth, particularly in his films with John Woo.
The action superstar can be seen in most of his movies with twin guns (usually two Beretta 92s) and dark shades during a gunfight.
Often plays criminals or killers who usually have a moral code
Often works with John Woo
Tall, slightly hunched frame

Turned down the role of Morpheus in Matrix (1999).
Chow Yun-Fat was born of the Hakkha (aka Ha Ka) race, an ethnic group from China that has moved from one region to another without taking up permanent residence since the ancient times. The Hakkha dialect is now the second most popular dialect in Taiwan.
Ironically, John Woo cast him in his breakout film City Wolf (1986) because he didn't look like an action star.
He helped Andy Lau in his movie career, after it almost crashed when he refused to sign a contract with TVB, which made him blacklisted from Hong Kong Television.
Enjoys photography. His elder sister also is a photographer.

In the West audiences think I am a stereotyped action star, or that I always play hitmen or killers. But in Hong Kong, I did a lot of comedy, many dramatic films, and most of all, romantic roles, lots of love stories. I was like a romance novel hero.
If I can associate with the people very, very gently very, very friendly every day I'm happpy. If I don't pay them respect I feel terrible inside" - From an interview with Chow Yun-Fat in the Documentary Chow Yun-Fat goes Hollywood
As an actor we're just like workers in a factory, we provide our services to directors. But I must do my job perfectly, and I love what I do.
Working in front of the camera keeps me alive. I couldn't care less about actors' trailers and food on sets and stuff like that - I just want to act.
[on his Mandarin pronunciation in Tiger & Dragon (2000)] It's awful. The first day I had to do 28 takes simply because of the language problem. That's never happened before in my life. It put me under a lot of pressure. There was a lot of dialogue in this film, more than I've ever had to speak before. It was like speaking Shakespeare.