Edison Chen Koon-hei (, born Chen Hing-wah on 7 October 1980) is a Canadian-born Hong-Kong actor, singer, rapper, fashion designer and entrepreneur.
Chen is the co-founder of CLOT, a Hong Kong-based streetwear and fashion label.
1999
Debuting in 1999, he released multiple Cantopop and Mandopop albums under the record company Emperor Entertainment Group, before releasing Please Steal This Album in 2004, the first of many Cantonese-language hip-hop albums.
In 1999, a talent scout approached Chen while he was clubbing with friends in Hong Kong and asked him to film a commercial.
He was aged 19 when he was featured in Leon Lai's Citibank commercial.
In the same year, he also starred alongside Cecilia Cheung in a commemorative subway commercial.
From then on, his career began with the Japanese film Dead or Alive 2: Birds.
2000
He made his Hong Kong film debut in the film Gen-Y Cops in 2000.
He starred in many popular films including Infernal Affairs, Infernal Affairs II, Initial D, and Dog Bite Dog.
Determined to expand his horizons to countries around the world, he also starred in the Japanese drama Under the Same Moon.
In 2000, at the age of 20, Chen landed a record deal with Emperor Entertainment Group.
It took him a number of successful album releases before he was given the opportunity to produce a hip hop album.
2004
His first hip-hop release was in February 2004, called Please Steal This Album backed by MC Yan and Singaporean musician Hanjin Chen.
Several singles from the album topped local pop charts.
Chen mentioned the difficulty of fitting in Hong Kong, where Cantopop dominates, but said that hip hop has a great potential.
He is featured on M-Flo's album, Cosmicolor, on the track "LOVE ME, HATE THE GAME" with Chen, Thaitanium and Ryohei Yamamoto.
2006
He speaks conversational Japanese as a result of his early training to be a Hong Kong idol, and he knows some basic Khmer since he learnt it when portraying a Cambodian assassin in the 2006 Hong Kong movie Dog Bite Dog.
In 2006, he made his American debut as a Hong Kong journalist in The Grudge 2.
He was offered a small role in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift but he declined.
2008
On 21 February 2008, he publicly announced that he intended to step away "indefinitely" from the Hong Kong entertainment industry due to a sex photo scandal, in which numerous explicit photographs of Chen and several Hong Kong actresses were published online.
2009
After Chen's comeback in late 2009 he began work on his next album titled Confusion.
The record includes a feature by well-known Taiwanese rapper MC HotDog, as well as famous singers Sammi Cheng and Jay Chou.
2010
He returned in 2010 but other than a brief cameo in the 2014 film Golden Chickensss, he did not make a complete comeback to the Hong Kong film industry until 2016.
Along with his two older sisters, Chen was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and is of Chinese and one-eighth Portuguese descent.
Chen's father is businessman Edward Chen (陳澤民), a Hong Kong entertainment industry mogul famously known as "Ninth Brother" (九哥).
He is of Shanghai ancestry on his father's side.
He was a student at R.C. Palmer Secondary School in Richmond, British Columbia and also attended Hong Kong International School.
He was in the same tenth grade class as fellow actor Nicholas Tse.
Chen's native language is English.
He is also fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin, which he primarily records music in.
2011
The filming of the movie was scheduled to begin in 2011 but it has been delayed indefinitely.
2012
Chen released two Cantonese hip-hop albums in collaboration with Hong Kong rappers MC Yan and Chef entitled 三角度 (3 Corners) and 三角度(二) (3 Corners II) in 2012 and 2015 respectively.
Edison's foray into the fashion industry accompanied his rising success as a young pop icon.
2013
His final film in Hong Kong as of 2013 is The Sniper, which was filmed before his photo scandal.
He also filmed a cameo as a thug in The Dark Knight but because of the scandal, his role was reduced and was seen very briefly as a receptionist instead.
Some reports states that he was originally cast to play Lau, a corrupted Chinese accountant, which was played by Chin Han.
He made his comeback in an Asian-American film called Almost Perfect.
On 28 October, during a fashion event in Beijing, Edison Chen announced that he would be starring in Initial D 2.
2014
In 2014, he made an brief comeback to the Hong Kong film industry in Golden Chickensss.
2016
After eight years of doing short roles, he is officially making a comeback to the entertainment business after he was spotted filming for Lou Ye's new project in Guangzhou in April 2016.
