He has worked on over fifty Chinese-language films, being best known for his collaborations with Wong Kar-wai in Fallen Angels, Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love and 2046.

Doyle met Stan Lai and Ding Nai-chu at Idea House, a restaurant in Taipei.

[2] While living in other countries, he took on several odd jobs, such as being an oil driller in India, a cow herder in Israel, and a doctor of Chinese medicine in Thailand.

A couple of years later, he became a cinematographer, working with Taiwanese director Edward Yang on the 1983 film That Day, on the Beach.

He has also made more than 20 films in various other languages, working as director of photography on Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho, Liberty Heights, Last Life in the Universe, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Paranoid Park, and The Limits of Control, among others.