Angela Mao in Lady Kung Fu outsold Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon at US cinemas, so who is this legendary martial arts actress?

The characters Mao played fought mercilessly and she had an intense screen presence, but it was her Peking Opera school training that was key to her success

The first actress signed to the Golden Harvest studio, her films with Sammo Hung and Carter Wong made her a star, one as well known in the US as Bruce Lee

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Angela Mao in a still from Enter the Dragon (1973), in which she plays Su Lin, the sister of Lee’s character. A trained martial artist, she had an intense screen presence.

Published: 7:00am, 26 Jul 2020Updated: 11:50am, 27 Jul 2020

Back in 1973, martial arts performer Angela Mao Ying was as famous as Bruce Lee in the United States. Her film Hapkido (known as Lady Kung Fu there) even knocked Lee’s Enter the Dragon, in which she played Lee’s sister, off the top of the US box-office charts for a week.

Mao owed her success partially to the fact that, unlike many actresses in martial arts films, she was a trained martial artist before she started making films. No concessions were made to Mao’s femininity in her movies – she fights mercilessly and sustains injuries.

She managed her career well and featured in more than 40 films between 1968 and 1992. Her major films include Hapkido, Lady Whirlwind (bizarrely retitled Deep Thrust in the US) and When Taekwondo Strikes. Mao also had a role in King Hu’s wuxia film The Fate of Lee Khan.

During this time, she built up strong working relationships with Hong Kong martial arts actor Sammo Hung Kam-bo, who often choreographed her films and appeared in supporting roles; with Carter Wong, with whom she formed an on-screen partnership; and with director Huang Feng, with whom she later formed a production company.

“Angela cut a very striking presence on the screen,” says David Wilentz, who arranged a rare question-and-answer session with Mao for the Old School Kung Fu Fest in New York in 2017. “I think that what made her so popular the world over was the intensity of her presence.”