Profile | Who is Gordon Lam Ka-tung, Hong Kong actor and producer who took the long road to success?

This is the 43rd instalment in a biweekly series profiling major Hong Kong pop culture figures of recent decades. Gordon Lam Ka-tung is an exception in the age of “nepo babies”, influencers and pop singers branching out and invading the film industry as actors. He is a true grass-roots act, a man who toiled on the sidelines before finally gaining widespread recognition after a full three decades in the acting business when, at the age of 50, he won his first best film actor award for his role in the 2016 Hong Kong crime thriller Trivisa. He is the second youngest of eight children, most of whom are older sisters; the family is so numerous, it has been reported, because of his father’s desire to have sons who would inherit his jade trading business. Born and raised in Kowloon City, Lam moved home several times growing up after his father’s jade business failed; his mother had a low-paying cleaning job. When Lam was in primary school, he and his family moved into the notorious Kowloon Walled City, where they lived for four years. Although his upbringing differs greatly from that of many others in the entertainment industry, Lam has never been shy about recounting his humble beginnings. “We lived on the 12th floor with low voltage and no lift, so my sisters and I all walked the stairs together; the water pressure was also not high enough, so we had to use buckets to carry water from the communal tap downstairs. “But because of this, the neighbours saw each other often and had very good relationships. The living conditions were very bad, but we were happy,” he recalled in a 2017 interview. Indeed, Lam saw the bright side to life in the anarchic enclave. “The Walled City faced the [Kai Tak] airport, almost like it was encouraging the people living there to work hard despite the chaos in front of them and charge upwards and move forward to achieve their dreams,” he said. His parents divorced not long after he finished primary school, and Lam and his siblings moved into government housing with their mother. In his teens, Lam took a series of odd jobs to earn money to help his family – at a gaming arcade and as a postman, takeaway food courier and product packer. After finishing secondary school he did hotel work, as a bellboy and tidying rooms, but soon found it was not his calling. In 1987, At the age of 20, he enrolled in Hong Kong broadcaster TVB’s one-year artiste training programme. After that he appeared mostly in small roles that did not pay well. In the 1990s, to pay the bills he worked part-time, first in the property sector, then in foreign exchange, until these side gigs became distracting and he shifted his focus back to acting. Although his television career was not easy at first, Lam persisted because of his love of acting. He has said on multiple talk shows that he enjoyed acting because he felt he and his life were “boring”, and acting was “the only way I could escape”. Towards the end of the 1990s, Lam was finally offered more leading roles in TVB productions – including 1997’s supernatural romance drama Time Before Time, his biggest success as an actor up to that point – and he began dreaming bigger. In 2001, after shooting wrapped on a period drama, Country Spirit, he took the leap from television to film and began anew under an artist management company founded by actor Andy Lau Tak-wah. In the 2000s, Lam was nominated for best supporting actor at the 21st and 28th Hong Kong Film Awards for his parts in Dance of a Dream (2001) and Ip Man (2008). He had supporting roles in Hong Kong crime films, such as Infernal Affairs (2002), Election (2005) and Sparrow (2008), that found an international audience. While film proved to be a tougher nut to crack than television, Lam’s ambition was not limited to acting. In 2010 he produced his first film, Gallants. The low-budget martial arts comedy was a critical darling and became the surprise best picture winner at the 30th Hong Kong Film Awards the following year. “I’m enjoying myself so, so much these days,” he told the Post in a 2013 interview. “I have the opportunity to do what I like and express the ideas that I’m personally interested in. I also have the chance to perform opposite excellent actors. I feel blessed.” In 2013 Lam started his own film production company, Homemade Management. That was also the year in which he got his first big break as a leading man, in the film Firestorm opposite Lau. Having a producer credit meant that he was earning less than when he acted, but Lam did not mind. “I don’t want to focus on money. It’s not what I care about,” he said in 2015 of the horror comedy Get Outta Here, his second film as a producer and one that he spent three years working on. “Chasing dreams is always going to be difficult. If I cared about money, I wouldn’t have left television all those years ago. You may say I’m illogical, but I’m being responsible for my dream. “Some people would say I was earning a lot less, but I’d think, ‘How much is enough?’” All the while Lam kept up his acting career, and in 2017 he took home his first best actor prize at the 36th Hong Kong Film Awards for Trivisa, which was also named best picture. Lam told the Post later that Trivisa was “a bit of a turning point” in his career at a time when he had been “just ‘hovering about’”. Even so, some might say he continued to make “illogical” financial and career decisions. In 2020, it was reported that Lam accepted his lead role in Hand Rolled Cigarette for no pay and out of a desire to support the Hong Kong film industry. The directing debut of filmmaker Chan Kin-long, the film earned Lam best actor nominations at the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan. “I’m slowly building my values. I was an ox in the past, working very hard for every opportunity. In the last 10 years, I’ve got to know more of what I want,” he said in 2017. In 2021, he co-wrote and produced Time, a black comedy starring Patrick Tse Yin and Petrina Fung Bo-bo which received numerous nominations for awards, including for best screenplay at the 40th Hong Kong Film Awards, a first nod for his work behind the camera. Later that year, he told the Post that Time taught him that “it’s possible for us to write our own stories and connect with the audiences through them”. He added: “Why are we often writing our screenplays with one eye on the market? That’s not really necessary. When you write a good script, the market will open up for you.” Perhaps, having gone from the slums of Kowloon Walled City to a seat at the big boys’ table as one of Hong Kong cinema’s leading actors and producers, Lam, rather than being too idealistic or financially irresponsible, simply worked out the direction he wanted to go in. Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook

Profile | Who is Gordon Lam Ka-tung, Hong Kong actor and producer who took the long road to success?

An actor who grew up poor and had to wait decades for his first film awards, Gordon Lam has risen steadily to the top of Hong Kong cinema