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Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing, born Cheung Fat-chung, was a Hong Kong singer and actor. One of the most influential cultural icons in the Chinese world, Cheung was known for his debonair demeanor, flamboyant screen characters, and avant-garde, androgynous stage presence. Throughout his 26-year career, he released over 40 music albums and acted in 56 films. Born in Kowloon, British Hong Kong, Cheung studied in England since the age of 12 until he returned home in 1976. He garnered attention in 1977 when entering RTV's Asian Singing Contest and achieved popularity in 1984 with a hit single "Monica." Cheung is regarded as one of the founding fathers of Cantopop for defining the music genre in the 1980s. He announced his "retirement" from music in 1989 and emigrated to Canada the following year, but returned to Hong Kong in 1994. His reemergence from the musical retirement in the late 1990s, particularly in his 1996 album Red, was marked by sonic experimentation and daring imagery. In addition to music, Cheung achieved pan-Asian fame with such films as A Better Tomorrow (1986) and A Chinese Ghost Story (1987). He won the Best Actor at the 1991 Hong Kong Film Awards for his role in Days of Being Wild (1990), and became world-renowned for his performances in Farewell My Concubine (1993) and Happy Together (1997). On 1 April 2003, Cheung, suffering from clinical depression, died by suicide by jumping off the 24th floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel, Hong Kong. In 2010, he was voted third of CNN's most iconic musicians of all time, after Michael Jackson and The Beatles.