His first acclaimed film was the Hong Kong political drama The Story of Woo Viet (1981), in which he played a Vietnamese refugee struggling to reach the United States.

Chow also made several popular action films with Hong Kong director Ringo Lam, including City on Fire (1987), Wild Search (1989), and Full Contact (1992).

[7] His other notable Hong Kong and Chinese films include God of Gamblers (1989), Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), Let the Bullets Fly (2010), From Vegas to Macau (2014) and its two sequels (2015, 2016), and Office (2015).

He is also known in the West for The Corruptor (1999), Anna and the King (1999), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Bulletproof Monk (2003), and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007).

[12][13][14] He woke up at dawn each morning to help his mother sell herbal jelly and Hakka tea-pudding on the streets; in the afternoons, he went to work in the fields.

At 17, Chow left school to help support the family by doing odd jobs including a bellboy,[15] postman, camera salesman, and taxi driver.

After a one-year training, he signed a three-year contract with the TV station and made his acting debut in soap operas.

[16] Goldig Films, founded and solely-funded by Indonesian Chinese businessman Gouw Hiap Kian,[17] produced and distributed over 100 movies from 1972 to 1982.

He brought together his disparate personae in the 1989 film God of Gamblers, directed by the prolific Wong Jing, in which he was by turns a suave charmer, a broad comedian, and an action hero.

[22] In 2006, he teamed up with Gong Li and Jay Chou in the film Curse of the Golden Flower, directed by Zhang Yimou.

[25] In 2018, he co-starred with Aaron Kwok in Project Gutenberg, which earned him another Best Actor nomination at the 38th Hong Kong Film Awards.

[26] In 2023, he became the second Hong Kong actor, after Tony Leung, to be named Asian Filmmaker of the Year at the 28th Busan International Film Awards.

[citation needed] Despite being famous for using martial arts moves on the screen, Chow, in a conversation with Metro, revealed that he relied heavily on stunt coordinators and was not all as ‘athletic’ as it seemed, mentioning, “I am not like Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan”.