His notable international credits include his roles as Triad gangster Johnny Wong in Hard Boiled (1992), police superintendent Wong Chi-shing in the Infernal Affairs trilogy (2002–2003) and General Yang in the Hollywood film The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008).

Wong was born Anthony William Perry on 2 September 1961[5] to a Hong Kong Chinese mother of Taishanese descent, Wong Juen-yee,[6] and an English father, Frederick William Perry, who served with the Royal Air Force during World War II and later as a colonial officer.

[6] In his acting career, Wong has established a reputation for openly critiquing the Hong Kong film industry and its practices, actors' performances and pop culture in interviews and his personal microblog.

In some of those critiques, he revealed his experiences of being bullied and discriminated against—for being a "mixed race foreigner" and "during the 1960s, English-Chinese mixed race people like me were regarded as bastards" and for being born outside Hong Kong—while growing up in Hong Kong and during the early years of his acting career.

[9] He had stated in an interview that his mixed ethnicity initially caused him to be typecast as a villain, due to institutionalised racism in the Hong Kong film industry during this period.

Wong had also appeared in a number of international films, such as The Painted Veil and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

In a 2005 interview with Star eCentral, Wong stated that amongst his prolific output during the 1980s and the 1990s, a considerable number of films he appeared in were "terrible.