Peter Kwong, a martial artist and actor who played one of the Three Storms in Big Trouble in Little China and a henchman in The Golden Child during a prolific acting career and was active in actors union politics and the movie and TV academy leadership, has died. He was 73.
His reps told Deadline that Kwong died overnight Tuesday in his sleep but did not provide other details.
Born on April 9, 1952, Kwong began his screen career in the mid-1970s with guest shots on such TV series as Wonder Woman and Black Sheep Squadron and into the ’80s with Cagney & Lacey, Bret Maverick, The Greatest American Hero, Little House on the Prairie, Dynasty, The A-Team, Miami Vice, 227, St. Elsewhere, Matt Houston and others.
He also had bit parts in features but would land perhaps his most famous role by mid-decade.
Kwong was cast as Rain, one of the Three Storms, in John Carpenter’s 1986 action-adventure tale Big Trouble in Little China, starring Kurt Russell and Kim Cattrall. That same year he appeared on the big screen in Never Too Young to Die, starring John Stamos and Vanity, and in the Eddie Murphy starrer The Golden Child, playing restaurant owner and henchman Tommy Tong.
Training with the East/West Players, Groundlings and other groups, Kwong would continue to work regularly in films and TV shows in the 2020s. Among his silver-screen credits are The Presidio, Gleaming the Cube, I’ll Do Anything, Paper Dragons and Cooties. His numerous TV guest roles also included such popular shows as General Hospital, JAG, My Wife and Kids, The Wayans Brothers, Sisters, Drake & Josh, Lethal Weapon and King of the Hill.
Check out his demo reel circa 2009 here:
Kwong also was an accomplished martial artist, working in Northern Shaolin kung fu, Chinese kata and with weapons including swords, staffs, spears and nunchaku. Dancing was another specialty — from ballroom and martial arts fusion to disco and breaking. Friends also cited his impressing pop-locking skills.
Along with his nearly 50-year acting career, Kwong was active in Hollywood industry politics. He served on the SAG National Board of Directors for more than a decade and was on the AFTRA National Board of Directors. He also did a four-year stint on the Television Academy Board of Governors and was a member of the Actors Branch Executive Committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, among other roles. Kwong ran for the the merged SAG-AFTRA National Board and L.A. Local Board in 2017.
He also was an activist against anti-Asian stereotyping in Hollywood. In 2016, Kwong was among about two dozen signatories on a letter to AMPAS decrying jokes made at the expense of Asians during the Oscars that year.
“I was there at the Academy Awards, and I was shocked because [Academy President] Cheryl Boone-Isaacs went up and talked about diversity and then right after that comes the jokes from Chris Rock and Sacha Baron Cohen,” Kwong told Deadline at the time. “Some people have the attitude, ‘Why can’t you have a sense of humor, and in humor there are no boundaries?’ It’s because it gives people permission to not only continue it but to escalate it as well.”
Information about survivors and a memorial service was incomplete.
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