Li Nanxing

Jonathan Lee Nam Chey (born 7 November 1964), better known as Li Nanxing (Chinese: 李南星; Wade–Giles: Li2 Nan2 Hsing1), is a Singaporean actor and contracted artiste under MediaCorp. He is best known for acting in many Chinese-language television dramas produced by MediaCorp Channel 8. Li is also a Film Director and Film Producer.

Li is perhaps one of Singapore's most prolific veteran actors, and is widely regarded as the 'king' (大哥, "big brother") of Caldecott Hill, alongside Zoe Tay who is known as 'queen' and Chew Chor Meng, who is known as the 'leader', the three of them are having consistently been voted as the 'Top 10 Most Popular Artistes' for their respective genders in the annual Star Awards. Li has also won several Best Actor awards and was nominated every single year from 1997 to 2004.

Career

Li began his career during the 1980s after completing SBC's 6th drama training course and gradually rose to stardom in the 1990s. In 1993 he shot to fame for starring in The Unbeatables I alongside Zoe Tay, the first drama series ever produced in Singapore on gambling. For most of the 1990s, he, Tay and Chew Chor Meng were MediaCorp's three most popular actors and he was voted the Top 10 Most Popular Male Artistes ten years in a row and also won several Malaysia and Taiwan popularity polls at the Star Awards. In 2004 he was awarded the coveted "All-Time Favourite Artiste Award".

During the late 2000s, his career hit a rocky phase due to personal issues interfering with his work.^[1] After a two-year hiatus, he made his comeback in On the Fringe 2011 and also directed his first film, The Ultimate Winner.^[2] He produced his film, Imperfect, which he co-starred with Ian Fang and Kimberly Chia.

Some of his more famous shows include The Unbeatables trilogy and The Magnate; Li has also acted in 6 telemovies to date, and even sang the theme song of several of his shows. He mostly played in anti-hero roles such in The Vagrant, for which he won the Best Actor award at the Star Awards 2002 and On the Fringe 2011. In September 2012 it was announced that he will be cast in C.L.I.F. II as a police officer, which will be one of the few times he plays a protagonist.^[3]

Personal life

Li divorced his wife, former MediaCorp actress Yang Libing, in 2005, ending a marriage that had lasted 11 years. The couple had no children.

Filmography

Drama serials

Film

• What A Wonderful World 奇异旅程 (1995)
• The Ultimate Winner 赢家 (2011), as also Director of the film
• Imperfect (2012), as also Producer of the film

Telemovie

Awards

References

External links

• Official Website
• Profile on xin.msn.com
• Li Nanxing at the Internet Movie Database