Hong-Kong actor and singer Leslie Cheung was BOTD in 1956. Born Cheung Fat-chung in Kowloon in British-controlled Hong Kong to a middle class family, his father was a tailor who dressed celebrities including Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock and Marlon Brando. He had an unhappy childhood, marked by his father’s abusive treatment of his mother, and was sent to England aged 12 to be educated. After attending a private boys’ school, he studied at the University of Leeds, returning to Hong Kong in 1975 after his father suffered a stroke. He formed a pop band in 1977, adopting the name “Leslie” in tribute to English actor Leslie Howard. After a successful appearance in a TV singing contest, he was signed to a record label, eventually becoming a star of the 1980s Cantonese pop scene. After a series of film roles, his breakthrough success came in the 1986 action film A Better Tomorrow, followed by the cross-dressing love story He’s a Woman, She’s a Man” and Days of Being Wild, the first of his collaborations with filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai. Cheung’s brooding charisma, insolence and androgynous beauty made him one of Hong Kong’s most popular stars, earning him comparisons with James Dean. He became more well-known to Western audiences in the 1993 Cannes-winning film Farewell My Concubine, playing a gay opera singer whose life follows the same tragic path as his signature role of a loyal concubine. He reunited with Wong for the 1997 film Happy Together, playing a perpetually drunk and serially unfaithful gay man in a co-dependent relationship with his doormat boyfriend. Premiering at the Cannes Festival, where Wong won the director’s prize, the film was banned in China for its explicit gay sex scenes but embraced by international audiences, becoming one of the most beloved LGBT films of the decade. Cheung’s personal life was often turbulent: in a major break with Chinese tradition, he estranged himself from his father, eventually moving to Canada in 1990 to escape press attention in Hong Kong. Openly bisexual, he had relationships with men and women. In 1997, he came out as gay, announcing his relationship with his (male) childhood friend Daffy Tong Hok-tak. He committed suicide in 2003 after a long struggle with depression, aged 46. Now recognised as a major star of Asian cinema, his openness about his sexuality has made him an enduring LGBT icon. Amid many posthumous honours, the asteroid 55383 Cheungkwokwing was named in his honour.