Stephen Chow Sing-chi[1] (Chinese: 周星馳; born 22 June 1962) is a Hong Kong filmmaker,[2] former actor and comedian,[3] known for his Mo lei tau style, comic timing and stunts.

[6] Chow's given name "Sing-chi" (星馳) derives from Tang dynasty (618–907) Chinese poet Wang Bo's essay Preface to the Prince of Teng's Pavilion.

[12] Leung Chiu-wai won a place in the class, but Chow was rejected and became an office assistant for a shipping company, a job he describes as "so boring.

[17] Producer and actor Danny Lee signed him to a two year contract with his company, Magnum Films,[18] and cast him in a supporting role in the crime drama Final Justice (1988),[19] which won him the Golden Horse Award for Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Horse Awards.

Jeff Lau directed him in the police thriller, Thunder Cops II (1989), and remembered him in early 1990 when producer Ng See-yuen tried to capitalize on the success of the previous year's hit Chow Yun-fat vehicle, God of Gamblers.

Chow would not return to shoot a sequel and so, sensing a hole in the marketplace, Ng hired Jeff Lau to direct a parody.

[36] Win's Entertainment courted writer and director Gordon Chan to helm Chow's next project, Fight Back to School (1991).

Chan claims he was unsatisfied with the script and rewrote the film as an outline with 15 bullet points and the rest of the movie was improvised.

[36] The result was a movie that cast Chow in a heroic lead role and the result was HK$43 million at the local box office, a new franchise (there would be sequels in 1992 and 1993), and in what's considered a local benchmark of success, it represented the first time Chow unseated Jackie Chan from the number one spot at the Hong Kong box office.

Fortunately, Chow re-teamed with Kok and Lee again that same year for a James Bond parody he's credited as co-writing and co-directing, and From Beijing with Love[42] became the number three movie at the annual box office, beaten only by Chow Yun-fat's return to the God of Gamblers franchise and Jackie Chan's return to the character of a young Wong Fei-hung in Drunken Master II,[43] a character he'd last played in 1978 in the first Drunken Master.

Lau told Chow that if he kept making the same movie over and over again he would never find popularity with female audiences and he needed to play a romantic lead.

[46] In order to shoot on Mainland locations the movie became a Mainland-Hong Kong co-production between Chow's Choi Sing Company and Xi'an Film Studios.

[47] The remote Xi'an Studios had always encouraged innovation and become home to China's celebrated wave of Fifth Generation arthouse directors like Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige[48] and they were reluctant to work with a commercial, Hong Kong production.

[47] However, recent cuts in government subsidies forced them to look for new sources of financing and they embraced the co-production model.

[76] Chow and Jacqueline Law met while filming the TV series The Final Combat in 1989 and began dating shortly thereafter.

In a 2008 interview on Be My Guest, Chu recalled the breakup: "One day, after wrapping up work, I went to visit my boyfriend’s room.

Yu’s claim for damages of some HK$80 million was based on her purported share of the profits from Chow’s investments in his current luxury home at 12 Pollock’s Path on The Peak, three houses at The Beverley Hills in Tai Po and a private equity fund.

In 2013, Stephen Chow was elected a member of the 11th Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

[82] According to media exposure, Chow often arrives late and leaves early at the conference, and has not put forward any proposals.