Lee's earlier films, such as The Wedding Banquet, Pushing Hands, and Eat Drink Man Woman explored

the relationships and conflicts between tradition and modernity, Eastern and Western. Lee also

deals with repressed, hidden emotions in many of his films, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden

Dragon; Hulk; and Brokeback Mountain. Lee's insight into the human heart has allowed his

films to transcend cultural and linguistic barriers to speak to audiences all over the

world. Lee has won the Academy Award for Best Director

twice, first for Brokeback Mountain and most recently for Life of Pi. He also won the Academy

Award for Best Foreign Language Film for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He is the first person

of Asian descent to win an Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA for Best Director, and the only

director to win two Best Film Awards at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Early life Childhood and education

Ang Lee was born in the town of Chaochou in Pingtung, a southern agricultural county in

Taiwan. He grew up in a household that put heavy emphasis on education and the Chinese

classics. Both of Lee's parents moved to Taiwan from China following the Chinese Nationalists'

defeat in the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Lee's father imbued his children with studying Chinese

culture and art, especially calligraphy. Lee studied in the Provincial Tainan First

Senior High School where his father was the principal. He was expected to pass the annual

Joint College/University Entrance Examination, the only route to a university education in

Taiwan. But after failing the exam twice, to the disappointment of his father, he entered

a three-year college, the National Arts School, and graduated in 1975. His father had wanted

him to become a professor, but he had become interested in drama and the arts at college.

This early frustration set his career on the path of performance art. Seeing Ingmar Bergman's

film The Virgin Spring was a formative experience for him.

After finishing Republic of China Armed Forces's mandatory military service, Lee went to the

US in 1979 to study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he completed his

bachelor's degree in theater in 1980. Originally, Lee was interested in acting, but his challenges

with speaking English made it difficult and he quickly turned to directing. At UIUC, Lee

met his future wife Jane Lin, also a Taiwanese student, who pursued her Ph.D. degree. Thereupon,

he enrolled at the Tisch School of the Arts of New York University, where he received

his MFA in film production. He was a classmate of Spike Lee and worked on the crew of his

thesis film, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads.

During graduate school, Lee finished a 16mm short film, Shades of the Lake, which won

the Best Drama Award in Short Film in Taiwan. His own thesis work, a 43-minute drama, Fine

Line, won NYU's Wasserman Award for Outstanding Direction and was later selected for the Public

Broadcasting Service. Life after graduation

Lee's NYU thesis drew attention from the William Morris Agency, the famous talent and literary

agency that later represented Lee. At first, though, WMA found Lee few opportunities, and

Lee remained unemployed for six years. During this time, he was a full-time house-husband,

while his wife Jane Lin, a molecular biologist, was the sole breadwinner for the family of

four. This arrangement put enormous pressure on the couple, but with Lin's support and

understanding, Lee did not abandon his career in film but continued to generate new ideas

from movies and performances. He also wrote several screenplays during this time.

In 1990, Lee submitted two screenplays, Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet, to a competition

sponsored by Taiwan's Government Information Office, and they came in first and second,

respectively. The winning screenplays brought Lee to the attention of Li-Kong Hsu, a recently

promoted senior manager in a major studio who had a strong interest in Lee's unique

style and freshness. Hsu, a first-time producer, invited Lee to direct Pushing Hands, a full-length

feature that debuted in 1991. Career

Debut from Taiwan The 'Father Knows Best' trilogy

Pushing Hands was a success in Taiwan both among critics and at the box office. It received

eight nominations in the Golden Horse Film Festival, Taiwan's premier film festival.

Inspired by the success, Li-Kong Hsu collaborated with Lee in their second film, The Wedding

Banquet, which won the Golden Bear at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival and

was nominated as the Best Foreign Language Film in both the Golden Globe and the Academy

Awards. In all, this film collected eleven Taiwanese and international awards and made

Lee a rising star. These first two movies were based on stories of Chinese Americans,

and both were filmed in the US. In 1995, Hsu invited Lee to return to Taiwan

to make Eat Drink Man Woman, a film that depicts traditional values, modern relationships,

and family conflicts in Taipei. The film was a box office hit and was critically acclaimed.

For a second consecutive year, Lee's film received the Best Foreign Language Film nomination

in both the Golden Globe and Academy Awards, as well as in the British Academy Award. Eat

Drink Man Woman won five awards in Taiwan and internationally, including the Best Director

from Independent Spirit. The three films show the Confucian family

at risk and star the Taiwanese actor Sihung Lung to form what has been called Lee's "Father

Knows Best" trilogy. Arrival in Hollywood

Sense and Sensibility

Lee's three acclaimed first dramas opened the door to Hollywood for him. In 1995, Lee

directed Columbia TriStar's British classic Sense and Sensibility. The switch from Taiwanese

to British films did not prevent Lee's work from garnering awards: Sense and Sensibility

made Lee a second-time winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. It was nominated

for 7 Academy Awards, and won Best Adapted Screenplay for screenwriter Emma Thompson,

who also starred in the movie alongside Hugh Grant and Kate Winslet. Sense and Sensibility

also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Drama.

After this, Lee directed two more Hollywood movies: The Ice Storm, a drama set in 1970s

suburban America, and Ride with the Devil, an American Civil War drama. Although the

critics still highly praised these latter two films, their box office was not impressive,

and for a time this interrupted Lee's unbroken popularity – from both general audiences

and arthouse aficionados – since his first full-length movie. However, in the late 1990s

and 2000s, The Ice Storm has had high VHS and DVD sales and rentals and repeated screenings

on cable television, which has increased the film's popularity among audiences.

1999 onward Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

In 1999, Li-Kong Hsu, Lee's old partner and supporter, invited him to make a movie based

on the traditional Chinese “wuxia” genre. Excited about the opportunity to fulfill his

childhood dream, Lee assembled a team from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Mainland China

for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The film was a surprising success worldwide. With Chinese

dialogue and English subtitles, the film became the highest grossing foreign film in many

countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, and was nominated in 10

categories at the Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Foreign Language Film,

and Best Director. It ended up winning Best Foreign Language Film and three technical

awards. The success of Crouching Tiger demonstrated that Lee's artistry had a general appeal;

it also inspired such established directors as Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige to explore wuxia

films for Western audiences. Hulk

In 2003, Lee returned to Hollywood to direct Hulk, his second big-budget movie after the

disappointment of Ride with the Devil's restricted release. The film received mixed reviews and

became a moderate success, grossing over $245 million at the box office. After the setback, Lee

considered retiring early, but his father encouraged him to continue making movies.

Brokeback Mountain

Lee decided to take on a small-budget, low-profile independent film based on Annie Proulx's Pulitzer

Prize-finalist short story, Brokeback Mountain. In a 2005 article by Robert K. Elder, Lee

was quoted as saying, "What do I know about gay ranch hands in Wyoming?" In spite of the

director's removal from the subject at hand, Brokeback Mountain showcased Lee's skills

in probing the depths of the human heart. The 2005 movie about the forbidden love between

two Wyoming sheepherders immediately caught public attention and became a cultural phenomenon,

initiating intense debates and becoming a box office hit.

The film was critically acclaimed at major international film festivals and won Lee numerous

Best Director and Best Picture awards worldwide. Brokeback Mountain was the most acclaimed

film of 2005, winning 71 awards and an additional 52 nominations. It won the Golden Lion award

at the Venice International Film Festival and was named 2005's best film by the Los

Angeles, New York, Boston, and London film critics. It also won best picture at the 2005

Broadcast Film Critics Association, Directors Guild of America, Writers Guild of America,

Producers Guild of America and the Independent Spirit Awards as well as the Golden Globe

Award for Best Motion Picture – Drama, with Lee winning the Golden Globe Award for

Best Director. Brokeback also won Best Film and Best Director at the 2006 British Academy

Awards. Brokeback Mountain was nominated for a leading eight Oscars and was the front runner

for Best Picture heading into the March 5 ceremony, but lost out to Crash, a story about

race relations in Los Angeles, in a controversial upset. He became the first person of Asian

heritage and the first non-white person to ever win the Best Director at the Academy

Awards. In 2006, following his Best Director Oscar, Ang Lee was bestowed the Order of Brilliant

Star with Grand Cordon, the second highest civilian honour, by the Taiwanese government.

Lust, Caution

After Brokeback Mountain, Lee returned to a Chinese topic. His next film was Lust, Caution,

which was adapted from a short novel by the Chinese author Eileen Chang. The story was

written in 1950, and was loosely based on an actual event that took place in 1939–1940

in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, China, during World War II. Similar to Brokeback Mountain,

Ang Lee adapted and expanded a short, simple story into a feature film in a way that allows

individual figures to develop sophisticated layers of reserved emotions, without being

sidetracked by complicated plots or overstuffed material.

Lust, Caution was distributed by Focus Features and premiered at international film festivals

in the summer and early fall of 2007. In the US, the movie received a NC-17 rating from

the MPAA mainly due to several strongly explicit sex scenes. This was a challenge to the film's

distribution because many theater chains in the United States refuse to show NC-17 films.

The director and film studio have decided not to appeal the decision. Lee removed 9

minutes from the film to make the content suitable for minor audiences in order to be

permitted to show Lust, Caution in mainland China.

Lust, Caution captured the Golden Lion from the 2007 Biennale Venice Film Festival, making

Lee the winner of the highest prize for the second time in three years. When Lust, Caution

was played in Lee's native Taiwan in its original full-length edition, it was very well received.

Staying in Taiwan to promote the film and to participate in a traditional Chinese holiday,

Lee got emotional when he found that his work was widely applauded by fellow Taiwanese.

Lee admitted that he had low expectations for this film from the US audience since "its

pace, its film language – it's all very Chinese." Indeed, the film was ignored by

the Oscars, receiving zero nominations, despite the generally positive critical reception

and the fact most of Ang Lee's past films had received multiple Academy Award nominations.

It was snubbed even from consideration in the Best Foreign Language Film category; after

being officially submitted by Taiwan, the Academy ruled that an insufficient number

of Taiwanese nationals had participated in the production, thus disqualifying it from

further consideration. Lee was chosen as president of the jury for

the 2009 edition of the Venice Film Festival that took place from September 2 to 12, 2009.

Life of Pi

Lee's next film after 2009's Taking Woodstock was Life of Pi, which was adapted from the

novel of the same name written by Yann Martel. The story was a retrospective first-person

narrative from Pi, a then 16-year-old boy from India, who is the only human to survive

the sinking of a freighter on the way from India to Canada. He finds himself on a lifeboat

with an orangutan, a hyena, a wounded zebra and a Bengal tiger. During this unlikely journey,

young Pi questions and reassures his belief in God and the meaning of life. The novel

was once considered impossible to make into a movie, but Lee persuaded 20th Century Fox

to invest $120 million and heavily relied on 3D special effects in post-production.

Unlike most other sci-fi precedents, Lee explores the artistic horizon of applying 3D effects

and pushes the boundary of how this technology can serve the movie's artistic vision. The

movie made its commercial premiere during the Thanksgiving weekend of 2012 in the US

and worldwide and became a highly critical and box office success. In January 2013, Life

of Pi earned 11 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best

Adapted Screenplay and Best Visual Effects; only one fewer than Steven Spielberg's Lincoln.

He went on to win the Academy Award for Best Director.

In 2013 he was selected as a member of the main competition jury at the 2013 Cannes Film

Festival. Directing for television

In March 2013, it was announced that Lee will direct a television pilot for the drama series

Tyrant, created by Gideon Raff and developed by Howard Gordon and Craig Wright. Production

was scheduled for the summer of 2013 for the FX series. However, Lee decided to quit the

project to take a break from his hectic schedule. Recurring collaborators

Ang Lee has had a career-long collaboration with producer and screenwriter James Schamus

and editor Tim Squyres. He has also worked several times with music composer Mychael

Danna and a few times with Danny Elfman. Personal life

Lee lives in Larchmont, in Westchester County, New York, with his wife Jane Lin, a microbiologist,

whom he married in 1983. They have two sons, Haan, and Mason. Lee is a naturalized US citizen

and a Buddhist. His younger son Mason Lee starred in the Hollywood blockbuster movie

The Hangover Part II as Teddy. Filmography

Lee has been involved in the process of filmmaking in various capacities, though the highlight

of his career and legacy is his directorial work. The following are Lee's various credits.

Accolades Below are Ang Lee's films' major nominations

and awards. Lee has won a myriad of major international

awards, including 3 Academy Awards, 3 BAFTA Awards, 3 Golden Globe Awards; 3 Independent