In a career spanning half the 20th century Shih Kien made more than 300 films, but he is best known to western audiences for the role of Han, the one-handed criminal mastermind in Enter the Dragon (1973), the film that posthumously transformed Bruce Lee into a mainstream icon.
At the film’s climax the bare- chested Lee and Han confront each other in a hall of mirrors, an apparent homage to the Orson Welles film The Lady from Shanghai (1947). Han has a false hand with knives instead of fingers and slashes Lee’s face and body, scoring it with parallel red lines. It became one of the most famous cinematic images of the 20th century.
Shih’s name was styled in various different ways, though he was apparently born Shek Wing Cheung in the Guangdong province of China in 1913. He began practising martial arts as a boy and later studied various aspects of drama and theatre including make-up. His film career took off after the Second World War, particularly when he served as adversary to the Chinese folk hero Wong Fei Hung, who was played by Kwan Tak Hing.
Shih found a niche playing villains, with an array of beards and moustaches and a particularly villainous laugh. His name entered popular usage in Hong Kong as being synonymous with villainy. He and Kwan co-starred in a series of films from the 1940s to the 1960s, with Kwan as Wong and Shih as his enemy. He worked with most of the great Chinese action stars of the period, including Jackie Chan, with whom he appeared in Drunken Master (1978) and The Young Master (1980).
When Jet Li played Wong Fei Hung in the 1991 epic known to Western audiences as Once Upon a Time in China, Shih was given a cameo role as an old man dispensing advice.
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Shih Kien, actor, was born on January 1, 1913. He died on June 3, 2009, aged 96