FrameThrower · Actors · Chow Yun-Fat
Chow Yun-Fat
5 films · 301 frames · top-billed in 5 · 1986–2006
Born 18 May 1955 · Hong Kong, China
Chow Yun-Fat, previously known as Donald Chow, is a Hong Kong actor. He is perhaps best known for his collaborations with filmmaker John Woo in the five Hong Kong action heroic bloodshed films: A Better Tomorrow, A Better Tomorrow II, The Killer, Once a Thief and Hard Boiled, and in the West for his roles as Li Mu-bai in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Sao Feng in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. He mainly plays in drama films and has won three Hong Kong Film Awards for Best Actor and two Golden Horse Awards for Best Actor in Taiwan. Chow started his career in movies in 1976 with Goldig Films, the third largest film company at the time.
Awards
On FrameThrower we have: 5 films · 301 frames · top-billed in 5 · 1986–2006
- Tatler Most Influential Hong Kong2023
- Silver Bauhinia Star2003
- Golden Horse Award for Best Leading Actor1987
- Golden Horse Award for Best Leading Actor1985
How their films are shot
Measured across 301 frames from the 5 films we hold. This is the look of the work Chow takes, not a claim about any single frame — we index the cast of a film, never the people in a shot.
Across the 5 films we hold, 51% of their frames are night, 45% low key — the look of the work Chow takes.
Time of day
Lighting
Shot size
Camera angle
Mood
Films in the library
Every poster opens that film — stills, cinematography notes and colour palette.
Often with
Shared films in this library, not a full filmography.
A reference database for filmmakers
FrameThrower is a fully machine-searchable film database and visual reference library — all 301 frames from Chow Yun-Fat's 5 films, and 5,000+ films besides, indexed frame by frame and readable by AI. Search it in plain language, from a reference image, or by colour; call it from an API, an MCP server or an SDK. It's the reference layer for making the next movie.