馬笑英

简介

Ma Siu Ying (1908–1978) was a Cantonese opera actress and film actress of Singaporean origin with Chinese ancestry. Born in Singapore on 9 February 1908, she was the eldest daughter in her family. Her father worked as a manager of a herbal medicine shop, and her mother was a laundry woman. She began her artistic career at the age of thirteen, taking to the stage to perform Cantonese opera to help support her family, and also practiced "Gwai Ji singing" (street singing for a living). By the age of fifteen, she had already become a famous leading Cantonese opera star in Southeast Asia. She later joined Ma Si Tseng's Taiping opera troupe in Hong Kong. After the Second World War, she transitioned to film and television acting. Her younger sister Ma Kam Neung was also a Cantonese opera and film actress. She was married to the famous comedian Yee Chau Shui and later divorced, then remarried film producer Cheung Tsok Kong, with whom she had two sons and one daughter. She was a member of the "Twelve Golden Flowers" group, which included several prominent Hong Kong actresses. Ma Siu Ying passed away on 9 February 1978, her seventieth birthday, after suffering a sudden heart attack at her home in Mei Foo Sun Chuen in Kowloon. She was rushed to Queen Margaret Hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 3:30 p.m.