Ang Lee

18th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards - Arrivals

Ang Lee in 2013, photo by Prphotos

Place of Birth: Chaochou, Pingtung, Taiwan

Date of Birth: October 23, 1954

Ethnicity: Chinese

Ang Lee is a Taiwanese-born American 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. His film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Ang Lee was born in Chaochou, Pingtung, Taiwan, to parents from mainland China, Lee Sheng and Yang Si-Chuan. 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 (2011).

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 Lee is a Buddhist.

2 Responses

  1. andrew says:

    @follers

    you should create a Tag for “Academy Award for Best Director”. Checking the celebs index, nearly all the winning directors from the 1970s are on the site (and some from previous decades too)

  2. Manila says:

    His parents are Lee Sheng and Yang Si-Chuan.

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