Linda Lin Dai

Linda Lin Dai (1934-1964) joined Shaw’s in 1957, and in the following year, she along with Chao Lei and Li Hang-hsiang formed an iron triangle of filmmaking. She starred in The Sable Cicada (1958), The Kingdom and the Beauty (1959) and the like, with which she not only heralded the wave of Huangmei Opera films for Shaw’s, but also left marks of glorious moments in her artistic life by winning the Best Actress Award 4 times in various Asian film festivals. The film Madam White Snake (1962) she starred in broke the box office record of Chinese and foreign films of Hong Kong at that time. In July 1964, Linda Lin Dai, at the age of 30, killed herself by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. The news of her death shocked the Chinese community worldwide, and thousands of people were there to bid her farewell at her funeral. In 1965, the Hong Kong Post Office issued the “Hong Kong Movie Stars” series of stamps. Linda Lin Dai was the only one among the Mandarin film stars to be selected for inclusion. This showed her how influential she was.