When Lai was four, his father was killed by Japanese bombing during the Battle of Shanghai; his mother died ten years later.
In his second film, Golden Lotus, also by Yueh Feng, he acted alongside the star actress Lin Dai.
[1][3] In the following years, he appeared in more than 40 films,[1][3] including Evan Yang's Our Dream Car (1959), Chung Kai-man (鍾啓文)'s The Education of Love (1961), and Wong Tin-lam's Father Takes a Bride (1963), starring opposite popular actresses such as Ge Lan, Jeannette Lin Cui, and Lucilla You Min.
He retired in the early 1990s, but returned to the screen for Andrew Lau's 1996 film Young and Dangerous 2 and Wong Kar-wai's award-winning In the Mood for Love (2000),[1] in which he played Maggie Cheung's boss.
[4] In 1974, Lai married martial arts actress Angela Mao, nicknamed "female Bruce Lee".