In 2018, the Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun Fat announced that he was planning to leave his whole fortune to charity on his death. In an interview with S. Korea’s Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation, he said, “this money isn’t something you possess forever. When you’re gone one day, you have to leave it to others to use it. You can’t bring the money in your bank account with you after you die.”

Chow (63) has starred in 121 movies and has a net worth of $720 million. But despite this fortune, he lives on $102 a day, rarely buys new clothes, uses public transportation, eats from street markets and used a flip phone for 17 years before it broke, according to the Asia News Network.

Dubbed “the coolest actor in the world” by the Los Angeles Times, Chow is best known in the US for Anna and the King (1999) which he played opposite Jodie Foster and 2007’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. (Because the Chinese authorities did not like how his character represented the Chinese people, censors removed his part from the movie when it was shown in his home country).  Other films Chow made in Hollywood include The Replacement Killers (1998), The Corruptor (1999) and Bulletproof Monk (2003). Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in which he played the lead role of swordsman Li Mu-Bai won two Golden Globes and an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Motion Picture in 2001.

"Times New Roman";color:black’>We put that feeling into the character and created a new kind of hero . . . who makes the audience feel he’s not a legend, not someone who came from a novel or a comic book. This kind of hero is living beside us . . . He is you.”

  He has also made a foray into comedies such as the 1989 God of Gamblers directed by Wong Jin, another blockbuster success in Hong Kong, as well as romances such as 1987’s An Autumn’s Tale for which he won a Golden Horse Award as Best Actor.

#222222;background:white’>Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”