Profile | How Hong Kong singer-actress Karen Mok went from Stephen Chow’s co-star to Mandopop queen
Starting out in Cantopop, Mok featured in a number of films in the 1990s before her Mandarin albums took off in Taiwan and mainland China
Karen Mok Man-wai is one of Hong Kong’s more internationally acclaimed stars. However, it is in the nearby Mandarin-speaking places that she has enjoyed greater success.
Despite growing up in a city where the majority speak Cantonese, she has released 13 Mandarin albums – the most of any woman singer who debuted in Hong Kong – and has spent the better part of the past decade touring in mainland China.
Mok was born in Hong Kong as Karen Joy Morris. She is of Chinese, Welsh, German and Persian descent, and comes from an academic family.
Her grandfather was one of the first principals at the prestigious King’s College school for boys in Sai Ying Pun. Mok herself studied at another distinguished establishment, the Diocesan Girls’ School, where she was active in drama groups and school plays.
In the 1985/86 school year, at about age 16, Mok was one of 10 girls who won the first Hong Kong Outstanding Students Award, given to secondary school students across the city for academic, extracurricular and community-service achievements.