Andy Lau is the biggest movie star / pop singer in Asia. He is 48. He is the equivalent of Brad Pitt combined with Justin Timberlake. Millions of women have crushes on him. I had a crush on him.
Teen girls vowed to commit suicide if he ever married. So, he promised his fans that he would never marry. He lived up to this by never appearing with a woman. Throughout all the decades of singing love ballads, he was never spotted with a woman by all the paparazzi dogging him, until last year.
In 2008, he was finally photographed with a Malaysian woman Carol Chu. She turns out to have been his girlfriend for 24 years.
They registered to get married in Las Vegas last year. The reason was to go for artificial insemination, which is only legal for married couples in Hong Kong. She is 43, and is now pregnant.
I wonder what it is like for them, having a secret relationship for 24 years. He's followed constantly by fans and paparazzi, so they must have practiced extreme secrecy to dodge publicity. Interviewers would ask whether he had a girlfriend, whether he was gay, whether he has secretly gotten married. He would always say that he is unattached. I wonder if she minded watching that.
Recently he took her to a movie in public for the first time. He rented out the theatre. There were a bunch of tabloid articles about it. This must mean that in these 24 years, they have not gone to a restaurant together. They don't go to parties. They don't go to the grocery store together. They don't go outside in the yard or balcony of their house.
This may be the only relationship she's had, since they started dating when she was 19. Imagine living your entire adult life in this way.
Interesting - didn't know that he went to such extreme lengths to maintain secrecy. A common dilemma in the lives of major entertainment celebrities: publicity intertwined with one's career and private freedom.
ReplyDeleteI'm amazed that Tiger Woods was able to keep his affair(s) private for so long as well!
ReplyDeleteThey have earned my respect!
ReplyDeleteWow, that dude is 48? It rocks being asian! Go us!
ReplyDelete24 years is a huge time and i am quite impressed.I wanna salute you guys.Carol Chu is the luckiest woman i guess.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember commenting on this in 2009!
ReplyDeleteStraits Times
ReplyDeleteHong Kong superstar Andy Lau, who last month joined social media for the first time in his 40-year-career, offered his fans a morsel of information about his 2008 wedding.
Usually tight-lipped on details of his marriage and family life, he surprised his 55 million Douyin followers when he revealed on Monday (Feb 8) that he did not invite any guests to his wedding to Malaysian former model Carol Chu, 54.
"I was worried that I would leave out good friends from the banquet guest list," said the 59-year-old actor-singer in his first live broadcast on the platform. "That would hurt the feelings of those whom I didn't invite, so I decided to forgo the dinner and not have any guests."
In his first foray into social media, Lau decided on Douyin, which is China's version of TikTok. He swiftly became one of its most popular celebrities, overtaking the likes of actress Zhang Ziyi and singers Eason Chan and JJ Lin in less than a fortnight.
https://www.straitstimes.com/life/entertainment/hong-kong-star-andy-lau-reveals-why-no-one-was-invited-to-his-wedding