lit a candle 3h agoMy dad found a bootleg copy of Time on a trip through Houston's Chinatown back in 2022, brought it home and we watched it together in our living room with subtitles that barely kept up. Didn't matter. 86 years old and he still had it. That record, oldest Best Actor winner at the Hong Kong Film Awards, stuck with me the way a good sports stat does. 89 is a long run. Rest well, Sei Gor.
Their story
Patrick Tse Yin, born Tse Ka-yuk, was one of the defining leading men of Hong Kong cinema. Known to generations of fans as Sei Gor, or Fourth Brother, because he was the fourth of eight siblings, he moved from the black and white Cantonese melodramas of the 1950s to the…
Patrick Tse Yin, born Tse Ka-yuk, was one of the defining leading men of Hong Kong cinema. Known to generations of fans as Sei Gor, or Fourth Brother, because he was the fourth of eight siblings, he moved from the black and white Cantonese melodramas of the 1950s to the golden age of TVB television in the 1980s, and then, in his eighties, to a late career triumph that made him the oldest Best Actor winner in the history of the Hong Kong Film Awards.
He was born on 13 August 1936 in Guangzhou, Guangdong, into a family whose fortune came from a native bank in Panyu run by his grandfather. The family moved to Hong Kong when he was a small child to escape the war. He attended Lai Chack Middle School and boarded at the Salesian School, but by his own account he preferred play to study, and he left school with only a junior secondary education.
In 1952, at 16, he passed the entrance test for the actor training class of the Lingguang film company, where he was interviewed by director Chun Kim. He made his screen debut the following year in the Cantonese comedy Turn Off the Water Tap Downstairs and became a star with the 1956 thriller 999 Murder Case. When Chun Kim co-founded the Kong Ngee studio that year, Tse and actress Ka Ling became its signature romantic pairing. He was voted one of the Top Ten Cantonese film stars eight times between 1957 and 1970.
In the 1960s he led the Silver Rat Gang, a group of young stars that also included Cheung Chung, Alan Tang, Charlie Chin and Lydia Shum. In 1967 he starred in Patrick Lung Kong's The Story of a Discharged Prisoner, whose Chinese title, Ying Hung Boon Sik, John Woo later borrowed for A Better Tomorrow. The same year he set up his own production company, and in the 1970s he directed, wrote or produced a run of romantic dramas including If Tomorrow Comes and Love in Hawaii.
In 1978 he joined TVB, and his small screen work became as famous as his films. As the gambling master Lo Sei-hoi in The Shell Game (1980), a role writer Wong Jing created for him, he made the nickname Sei Gor a household word. He also appeared in The Bund II, Love and Passion, The Legend of the Condor Heroes and The Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils.
His private life was followed as closely as his career. He married Taiwanese actress Chen Chen in 1974; they divorced in 1978. In 1979 he married actress and former Miss Hong Kong Deborah Lee, and they had two children, the singer and actor Nicholas Tse and the actress and model Jennifer Tse, before divorcing in the mid 1990s. The family spent several years in Richmond, British Columbia, from the late 1980s. From 2005 to 2017 he was in a widely publicised relationship with Shanghai model Coco Ma, 49 years his junior.
Back in Hong Kong he kept working for decades, in films such as Shaolin Soccer (2001), ATV's Central Affairs, TVB travel shows with fellow veteran actors, and late TVB dramas. In 2019 the Hong Kong Film Awards gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award. Two years later came Time (2021), a black comedy in which he played a retired contract killer. It won him his first ever Best Actor award, from the Hong Kong Film Critics Society, and in 2022, at 85, the Best Actor prize at the 40th Hong Kong Film Awards.
After that win he largely withdrew from public life. He had previously suffered a stroke and used a wheelchair in his last years. He died of pneumonia on 16 July 2026 at the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital in Happy Valley, aged 89. In line with his wish for a low key farewell, the family held a simple ceremony at the hospital and he was cremated at Wo Hop Shek Crematorium in Fanling under his birth name. Nicholas and Jennifer announced his death on 20 July. Nicholas recalled that his father always insisted on facing the camera at his best and often said, "The show must go on."
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (English and Chinese), South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, The Standard, AsiaOne, CNA Lifestyle, China Daily HK, The Star. Wikipedia ↗
In their own words
“The show must go on.”
A phrase he often said, as recalled by his son Nicholas Tse in his July 2026 tribute
“Once you're a star for a day, you have to be a star for life.”
Advice to writer and director Wong Jing, as Wong recalled in 2026
“I really hope I'll bid goodbye to the world at the happiest point of my life. I'll tell my good friends and family, 'Don't make it a big affair. Let me leave quietly.'”
Earlier interview, quoted by AsiaOne in July 2026
“The most important thing is to pose with style!”
Teaching card tricks to Charmaine Sheh on the set of Bet Hur, as she recalled
“So if you think of Sei Gor, if you think of my father, don't cry and don't be too heartbroken. He would feel that it is not suave enough.”
Nicholas Tse, announcing his father's death, July 2026
“Our father lived a remarkable and accomplished life, not only as an actor and artiste, but as someone who brought joy to everyone around him with his unmistakable spirit.”
Family statement shared by Jennifer Tse, 20 July 2026
Photos
1Patrick Tse at a Forensic Heroes IV costume press event, October 2018
Oct 2018 · by People Forever
From social media
7Posts by Patrick, and posts about them, kept here so they are not lost.