Thisbiography of a living personneeds additionalcitations forverification. Please help by addingreliable sources.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced orpoorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentiallylibelous. Find sources: "Michael Hui" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Michael Hui
Hui at the2022 Hong Kong Film Awards
Born	(1942-09-03)3 September 1942 (age 82) Panyu,Guangdong,China
Occupations	Actor playwright director producer
Years active	1968–present
Spouse	Cheng Kit-ying ​ (m. 1972)​
Children	2
Relatives	Ricky Hui (brother) Sam Hui (brother)
Awards	Hong Kong Film Awards –Best Actor 1981Security Unlimited
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	許冠文
Simplified Chinese	许冠文
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Xǔ Guànwén Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Héui Gun Màhn Jyutping Heoi2 Gun3 Man4
Musical career
Also known as	Cool-faced comedian, Mr. Boo! (in Japan)
Origin	Hong Kong
Musical artist

Michael Hui Koon-man (bornChinese:許冠文; 3 September 1942; also known asMr Boo!) is aHong Kong actor,comedian,scriptwriter anddirector. He is the eldest of the four Hui brothers (together withRicky,Sam, and Stanley) who were prominent figures in the Hong Kong entertainment industry during the 1970s and the 1980s. Michael Hui is considered by many critics to be one of the foremost comedians in theHong Kong film industry.

Hui studied inLa Salle College, and then earned a degree insociology from theUnited College, theChinese University of Hong Kong.

After a spell hostingquiz shows onTVB, Hui gained popularity in the Hong Kong entertainment industry with his variety show stints in theHui Brothers Show. He then moved from television to film. Hui's first work was in a film byTaiwanese directorLi Han-hsiang calledThe Warlord (大軍閥 or "The Great Regime", 1972), where he played a farcicalwarlord in post-revolutionary China.

In 1974, he set up his own film company, the Hui Film Company, withGolden Harvest, with his brothersRicky andSam. Between 1974 and 2000 he created more than 20 comedy films, five of which were Hong Kong's No. 1 box-office hit of the year.

The earliest Hui comedies combined episodic gags with the comedic appeal of Michael and his brothers. This usually involved the trio of actors—Michael, Sam and Ricky—pitting their wits against the odds to earn quick bucks and their livelihood. Set in modern-day Hong Kong, with upbeat soundtracks performed by Sam himself, these works became wildly popular amongst the working classes in the 1970s and early 1980s.Games Gamblers Play (1974),The Private Eyes (1976),The Contract (1978) andSecurity Unlimited (1981) – the last of which won him the firstHong Kong Film Award for Best Actor – are often seen as the quintessential comedies made by the company.Games Gamblers Play was a huge success when first released and paved the way forCantonese movies to hold their own against the colonial trend ofMandarin production.

In the 1980s, Hui developed a new brand ofsatirical comedy, one which capitalized on his deadpan comic timing, using a more character-driven storyline. Some of his more renowned works came during this period in the 1980s. Hui frequently acted out the archetypal "ne'er-do-well" driven on by a cash-mad Hong Kong society. Equally caustic and funny, they are set against the backdrop of present-day Hong Kongconsumerism. He would make a rare North American film appearance as theSubaru mechanic/engineer withJackie Chan in theBurt Reynolds comedyThe Cannonball Run. InChocolate Inspector (1986), he plays a chocolate-eating inspector who must solve a kidnap case while his subordinate is involved in aMiss Hong Kong pageant. InChicken and Duck Talk (1988), opposing restaurateurs come to blows to secure profits.Front Page (1990), which reunited the three brothers, lampoons the Hong Kong press, whileThe Magic Touch (1992) satirizes the Chinese obsession withfortune-telling and wealth.Always on My Mind (1993) continues in this vein of self-deprecating humour: Hui plays the head of a family, a news anchor, who will stop at nothing to grab money.

Hui continued acting and producing his own comedies, at a less prolific rate, in the 1990s and 2000s. He wrote a dozen screenplays, but none were produced because he felt dissatisfied.^[1]Chinese Box (1997), directed byWayne Wang, remains Hui's only starring film in the West. He played a talented safe-cracker, who kidnaped a baby for money from triads but was kind-hearted and dignified, in the action-comedyRob-B-Hood (2006), starring alongside Jackie Chan andLouis Koo. In 2006, he became the host of the quiz showDeal or No Deal. In 2016, he starred in the Taiwaneseblack comedy film,Godspeed, for which he is nominated theGolden Horse Award for Best Leading Actor.

Organized by theHong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC), the 15th Hong Kong Arts Development Awards was held on Oct 30, 2021. Hui was one of the recipients of the Award for Outstanding Contribution in Arts, for his active involvements in filmmaking as a director, a screenwriter and actor.^[2]

This film-related list isincomplete; you can help byadding missing items.(October 2021)

• Cinema of Hong Kong

Wikimedia Commons has media related toMichael Hui.

• Official website
• Michael Hui atIMDb 
• Interview at FarEastFilms.com

• 1942 births
• Living people
• 20th-century Hong Kong male actors
• 21st-century Hong Kong male actors
• Alumni of the Chinese University of Hong Kong
• Chinese emigrants to British Hong Kong
• Chinese University of Hong Kong people
• Hong Kong film directors
• Hong Kong film producers
• Hong Kong male comedians
• Hong Kong male film actors
• Hong Kong screenwriters
• Male actors from Guangzhou
• Members of the Selection Committee of Hong Kong
• New Hong Kong Alliance politicians
• People from Panyu District
• Screenwriters from Guangdong
• Writers from Guangzhou

• CS1 foreign language sources (ISO 639-2)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• BLP articles lacking sources from December 2017
• All BLP articles lacking sources
• Use dmy dates from February 2021
• Articles containing Chinese-language text
• Articles with hCards
• Pages using infobox musical artist with associated acts
• Incomplete film lists
• Incomplete lists from October 2021
• Commons category link from Wikidata