Ang Lee

Ang Lee in 2013, photo by Prphotos

Place of Birth: Chaochou, Pingtung, Taiwan

Date of Birth: October 23, 1954

Ethnicity: Chinese

Ang Lee (Chinese: 李安; pinyin: Lǐ Ān) is a Taiwanese-born film director, screenwriter, and producer. He has twice won the Academy Award for Best Director, for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Life of Pi (2012). He is the first non-white person to have won the award. He has also directed the films Pushing Hands, The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman, all of which he co-wrote; Sense and Sensibility, The Ice Storm, Ride with the Devil, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film; Hulk (2003), Lust, Caution; Taking Woodstock, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and Gemini Man. He has often collaborated with James Schamus, who has written/co-written and produced many of Ang’s films.

Ang was born in Chaochou, Pingtung, Taiwan, to Lee Sheng and Yang Si-Chuan, parents from mainland China, considered “Waishengren.” Chaochou is a heavily agricultural county. He went to the U.S. to study in 1979. Ang is married to molecular biologist Jane Lin, who is also of Taiwanese origin, and with whom he has two children, including actor Mason Lee. Mason co-starred in the film The Hangover Part II.

In 2005, he stated:

I was never a citizen of any particular place… My parents left China to go to Taiwan. We were outsiders there. We moved to the States. Outsiders. Back to China. Now we were outsiders there, too — outsiders from America.

Ang is a Buddhist.