Mistaken Identity Helped Wallace Chung Find Stardom
Above: Wallace Chung and Mickey Chu in 1993 drama, “The Chord to Victory”.
Once a rising star with TVB, Mickey Chu (朱健鈞) has all but faded from the spotlight. On the other hand, Mickey’s peer and good friend, Wallace Chung (鍾漢良) steadily climbed his way up to the A-list. This is a dramatic reversal of fates between the two compared to their early days, where Mickey was the lead in TVB drama The Chord to Victory <少年五虎> and Wallace merely played a supporting role in the same drama. Years later, Mickey and Wallace have now reunited in Johnnie To‘s (杜琪峯) new film, Three’s Company <三人行>, where Wallace forms part of the headlining cast while Mickey is as good as an extra.
There are several reasons for this divergence in the paths of the two, and some trace it to a curious incident involving mistaken identities that happened a long time ago.
Purportedly, Taiwanese singer Samuel Tai (邰正宵), who was extremely popular at the time, admired Mickey’s good looks and was interested in helping him with his career. Samuel thus tried to contact Mickey through a middleman. For some reason or other, this middleman made a mistake and introduced Samuel to Wallace instead of Mickey.
Wallace was then given the opportunity to develop his career in Taiwan and launched a successful music career, even reaching the same level of popularity as Jimmy Lin (林志穎) at one point in time. Even though Wallace’s career eventually came to a standstill in Taiwan, he managed to revive his popularity in Mainland China and now commands about $113,000 USD for filming each episode of a drama series.
On the other end of the spectrum, Mickey generally lacked ambition throughout the span of his career and it never took off. In 2007, he left TVB for ATV, where he worked for just a year. Mickey then attempted to make a name for himself in Malaysia but this too failed, and he eventually returned to TVB as part of the roster for filling B-list and C-list roles.
However, Mickey can take comfort in his successful family life, as he is happily married and was recently spotted spending quality time with his young son at a toy store.
Source: ihktv.com
This article is written by Jingles for JayneStars.com.
I still remember Wallace, was buying he CD along with Jimmy Lin CD… they were like the top pop idol in Taiwan at that time.
I can only have memories of Mickey in 开心华之里 a popular TVB sitcom back in the days.
Guess i’m getting old… lol
@vodka I remember Mickey from that sitcom too, though for a good number of episodes, I actually did think Mickey’s character was played by Wallace (so yes, I am one of the guilty ones who mixed the 2 of them up back then…lol).
@llwy12 I think Wallace and Mickey have looks that are very different from each other. However, the confusion may be that they were both newcomers who debuted in the same drama “The Chord to Victory”. I liked both of their performances in the drama, but became very impressed with Wallace in 1994’s “Journey of Love”.
Aside from the twist of fate which helped Wallace launch his career in Taiwan, career success is often associated with personality traits such as determination and persistence. Wallace was lucky to have been given certain opportunities, but he made the most of them to be where he is today.
@jayne I very like Wallace. very Handsome. Act in romance films, very good. I very like films such as Too Late to say to love you, the Best Time. Act in kiss scences and Romance scence, very Beautiful. Act in Secret garden, very Atractive.Fun
I initially thought it was Gary Chan (Noel Leung’s husband) standing next to Wallace! Anyway, I don’t remember Mickey’s acting to be very good or outstanding but he was sure promoted for a while before fading away from the spotlight. I remember him being in a movie with Nicky Wu and Athena Chu.
Sorry, I really have no idea who they are…