Tsui Hark (it's pronounced "Choy Hok") was born Tsui Man-kong in Canton on January 2, 1951, but raised in Saigon. His father was a pharmacist and the family was large, sixteen children from three marriages. Tsui made his first film at ten, filming a magic show. At fourteen, Tsui was sent to Hong Kong for his secondary education, and three years later he came to the United States to major in film. After living in both Texas and New York, Tsui returned to Hong Kong in 1977.

Within a month of his return he landed a job working in television. After he made a costume drama called Golden Dagger Romance (for CTV), he moved on to his first feature film, 1979's The Butterfly Murders. Although the film flopped financially, the young director (inspired in large part by Roman Polanski's vampire comedy The Fearless Vampire Killers) went on to make the cannibal caper We're Going to Eat You, followed by the political thriller Dangerous Encounter of the First Kind. It wasn't until he directed the spy spoof All the Wrong Clues that Tsui had a commercial hit.

For his next film, Zu: Warriors From the Magic Mountain, Tsui ventured back to the U.S. in search of special effects technicians whom he brought back to Hong Kong to train local technicians. Disappointed with studio interference during post-production of Zu, Tsui went on to form his own company, Film Workshop, with his wife, producer Nansun Shi. Although the company was originally intended to be temporary, it went on to become one of the most successful production companies in Hong Kong. As a producer, Tsui found great success with the John Woo-directed A Better Tomorrow, which became one of the biggest hits in Hong Kong cinema history and also won Best Picture at the 1987 Hong Kong Film Awards. That same year Tsui directed and co-produced Peking Opera Blues, which is now regarded as one of the classics of modern Chinese cinema.

As an actor, Tsui's work in the 1987 Final Victory (which was scripted by Wong Kar Wai) brought him a nomination for Best Supporting Actor; that same year he produced the Ching Siu-tung directed A Chinese Ghost Story, which enjoyed international success. In 1991 Tsui virtually re-defined the kung fu film with Once Upon a Time in China, which garnered him his first win as Best Director at the Hong Kong Film Awards (he was nominated again in 1993 for the first Once Upon a Time sequel). Tsui produced another box-office sensation in 1992 with Swordsman II, which introduced Asian audiences to Asia the Invincible, the transgendered warrior who made a superstar of actress Brigitte Lin. In 1995 Tsui received another Best Director nomination for The Lovers, and in 1997 Tsui finally realized his dream of bringing state-of-the-art computer imaging to Hong Kong with his animated remake of A Chinese Ghost Story, which combined traditional flat cel animation with 3d computer imagery. Tsui has since directed Jean Claude Van Damme's last two films, Double Team and Knock Off, and a landmark commercial for a mainland telecommunications company, which told the entire history of human communications in 90 seconds. His last film as a director, Time and Tide, was nominated for six awards the 2000 Hong Kong Film Awards, and, in Time magazine's Asian edition, Richard Corliss called it "breathlessly virtuosic" and "the movie-est movie of the year".

Listen to Tsui talk about filmmaking