Yuen Woo Ping Biography
Born: 1945
A legendary Hong Kong choreographer/actor/director whose first exposure to many stateside moviegoers came with his work in the Wachowski Brothers' 1999 breakthrough action flick The_Matrix, Yuen Wo Ping has subsequently crafted an impressive international career with work on such high-profile efforts as Ang_Lee's Crouching_Tiger,_Hidden_Dragon (2000) and Quentin_Tarantino's Kill_Bill (2003).
Born the eldest of 12 children in Guangzhan in 1945, young Wo Ping was schooled in the art of Peking Opera and kung fu by his highly regarded father, Yuen_Siu_Tin (who also served as something of a mentor to international action superstar Jackie_Chan). It was at his father's behest that the young martial artist was brought to the attention of the "Wong Fei Hung" series' producers in the 1960s, and Wo Ping's martial arts skills served him well as he rose through the ranks with stunt work in such Shaw_Brothers classics as The Chinese Boxer (1970). A year later, Wo Ping received his first credit as choreographer for director Ng_See_Yuen's Mad Killer, and through the remainder of the decade he would work frequently with both Yuen and the Shaw_Brothers. Of course, it wasn't long before Wo Ping was looking to advance his skills behind the camera, and in 1978, he made his directorial debut with the wildly popular Snake in Eagle's Shadow. Quickly following with Jackie_Chan's Drunken_Master and Dance of the Drunk Mantis (which featured his brother Sunny), Wo Ping's subsequent work with Golden Harvest found him again in the director's chair for such "Wong Fei Hung" efforts as Magnificent_Butcher and Dreadnaught.
After forming his own production company in 1979, Wo Ping's prominence on the Hong Kong screen would skyrocket and his influence expand with the efforts of his protégé Donnie_Yen; and though the popularity of traditional kung fu films would wane somewhat in the 1980s, Wo Ping's output never slowed. In 1991, the genre received something of a shot in the arm thanks to Tsui_Hark's popular Jet_Li vehicle Once Upon a Time in China (again featuring the enduring Wong Fei Hung and choreographed by Wo Ping), and subsequent work on Iron_Monkey (1993), Wing_Chun (1994), and Fist of Legend (also 1994) would yield some of the best martial arts films of the decade. After witnessing his jaw-dropping work on Fist of Legend, the Wachowski Brothers hired Wo Ping for The_Matrix, and following its 1999 release, his life would be forever changed. Soon faced with an unfathomably large fan base that was hungering for more of the same, video stores across the country were swarming with new fans eager to dive into his impressive body of work. Of course, Crouching_Tiger,_Hidden_Dragon would not disappoint, and after work on Tsui_Hark's Zu_Warriors and Black_Mask_2, he returned to American films for The_Matrix_Reloaded, The_Matrix_Revolutions, and Kill_Bill. Jason Buchanan, Rovi
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