This is the 52nd instalment in a biweekly series profiling major Hong Kong pop culture figures of recent decades. For an acclaimed movie star whose accolades include best actress at the Venice Film Festival, Deanie Ip Tak-han has surprisingly little regard for fame and fortune. Known for standing up for her views even if it affects her career, the actress and singer is one of the most outspoken entertainers in Hong Kong. She spoke out against the June 4, 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and joined protesters in Hong Kong in 2019 who opposed a law change to allow extraditions to mainland China. As a result, the 77-year-old’s music has been banned on the mainland. This does not appear to have bothered Ip, who is never one for compromise – she does not accede to directors’ wishes or chase after scripts, she has said. Born an illegitimate child in 1947, Ip had two mothers: one was her biological mother, a mistress, the other her father’s infertile wife, who detested having to raise another woman’s child. After finishing her studies in 1965 at a now-defunct private English-language secondary school in Kowloon Tong, Ip worked a few odd jobs before she was discovered by a music producer. She became a part-time songstress in the late 1960s, performing mostly covers of popular English-language songs. In 1969, her first EP, Deanie Ip, was released, featuring cover versions of Mandarin songs. She spent the next decade performing live without releasing any music of her own. She was discovered again towards the end of the ’70s – this time by television producers. She took on small roles and presented programmes for the now-defunct Rediffusion Television, Hong Kong’s first broadcaster, before jumping ship in 1978 to rival station Television Broadcasts (TVB). Ip had married Cheng Hong-yip, also known as Cheng Kang-yeh - a bit-part actor who also worked as a jockey - straight out of school when she was 17. They had two children before separating in 1973, reportedly because Cheng was unfaithful to her. They divorced in 1980, and Cheng and the children moved overseas. In 1982, then aged 35, Ip appeared in TVB drama The Emissary playing the mother of a policeman portrayed by Andy Lau Tak-wah, then 21, a pairing much loved by audiences. They would go on to play mother and son in Ng See-yuen’s 1985 legal drama The Unwritten Law and again in Handsome Siblings, a 1992 martial arts comedy from Eric Tsang Chi-wai and Wong Jing. They also became close friends off-screen. Around the same time, Ip began acting in films. She played a sex worker in social-issues drama Cream Soda and Milk (1981), for which she received her first film awards nomination - for best supporting actress at the 19th Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan – which she won. Ip bade farewell to TVB in 1985. The following year, she won best supporting actress at the Hong Kong Film Awards for her role as a triad leader in Angie Chen On-kei’s romance My Name Ain’t Suzie. She was also nominated for best actress, for her role in The Unwritten Law, at the same event. She also started singing again, releasing eight albums in the 1980s, but she left her record label in 1988 dissatisfied with her treatment. Ip worked regularly with Wong Jing throughout the 1990s. She picked up her second best supporting actress award, for Wong’s 1991 romcom Dances with Dragon, at the 11th Hong Kong Film Awards and won in the same category at the 36th Golden Horse Awards for her role in Wong’s 1999 film Crying Heart. In the 2000s, she put a temporary hold on her career and went to live with her children in the West. She resumed her movie career in Ann Hui On-wah’s A Simple Life (2011), which proved to be one of the best films both for Ip and its director. Once again, she played a mother figure to a younger man played by Lau in a film about the bond between an amah – a live-in maid, also known as a ma jeh in Cantonese, usually from southern China, who dedicated her life to the role – living out her final years following a stroke. A Simple Life premiered at the 68th Venice International Film Festival, with Ip scooping the best actress prize. She went on to do the same at the 48th Golden Horse Awards and the 31st Hong Kong Film Awards. “A 60-something-year-old getting this award … I bet there are no more chances to come on stage any more,” she said at the Hong Kong Film Awards ceremony. “This sounds like the words one would say before one’s death, but I mean it.” Ip did receive more offers after A Simple Life, although she turned most of them down. She said later: “I suppose some scripts came because my name became more ‘popular’, but I don’t want that to be the reason.” She has since appeared in just two films: Kiwi Chow Kwun-wai’s A Complicated Story (2013), on which she worked without pay, and Hui’s Our Time Will Come (2017), for which she won another best supporting actress prize at the 37th Hong Kong Film Awards. “I don’t have the ability or energy to chase gigs or seek out directors,” she said in 2017. “I don’t know how to say those things. They can reach out if they want to find me.” Aside from giving two concerts in 2013 and 2016 and recording one track, “Half a Lifelong Romance”, for 2017’s Tat Ming Pair Tribute Album, Ip was somewhat more active politically in the 2010s. In 2014, she picked up the microphone for “Raise the Umbrella”, a track performed by more than 30 Hong Kong musicians amid a series of protests demanding democracy and electoral reform. It was not the first time Ip had spoken in support of a political cause. In May 1989, she showed her support for the student protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square via a long-distance phone call, which was played out loud at the Concert for Democracy in China, an event held in Hong Kong that involved many other local celebrities. The following year, Ip joined an international tour of the concert and appeared in Shu Kei’s 1990 documentary film Sunless Days, which showed the impact of the Tiananmen crackdown. In 2016, she voiced her support for the now-self-exiled Hong Kong politician Nathan Law Kwun-chung ahead of legislative elections, and joined at least four of the citywide demonstrations held in 2019. Asked in 2016 whether she was concerned about suffering any repercussions from Beijing for her high-profile support of Law, she said: “They [Beijing] have the right to criticise and we respect their criticisms … I do what I want to do and what I think is right.” In light of all this, further major film roles appear unlikely. Meanwhile, Ip’s discography was removed from all major mainland Chinese music streaming platforms following her support of the 2019 protests. A search for “Ip Tak-han” on QQ Music and NetEase returns no results, while on Kugou, the only songs by Ip that appear are cover versions from other musicians, for which she is not credited. She does not seem to mind. “I think doing what’s right is the most important thing,” she said on a radio show in November 2019. “Listen [to my music] if you like. No problem if you don’t. It’s called ‘democracy’. You have the right to choose what you enjoy.” Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook.