Patrick Tam Yiu-Man has been recognized as a solid character actor in recent years, but his career encountered a few bumps along the way. Born on March 19, 1969, Tam fell in love with performing at a very young age. When he was sixteen he joined an acrobatic troupe and learned to do somersaults before being lured away by a growing interest in music.

In 1988, he won TVB’s 7th New Talent Singing Competition (Sammi Cheng placed third), and was accepted by Anita Mui as her second official student shortly thereafter. Tam was initially well received by audiences but his later experimentation with non-mainstream music, like jazz, was too radical for them. His record flopped and Warner Music decided not to renew his contract in 1992.

A dejected Tam turned to acting in the mid-nineties. He did a couple of television serials to pay the rent before exploding onto the movie scene with his performance in Beast Cops (1998). His role as Pushy-Pin won him a Hong Kong Film Award for Best Supporting Actor. Suddenly, the offers for movies and television came rolling in. He has appeared in almost twenty films since Beast Cops, including Purple Storm (1999), The Legend of Zu (2001) and the underrated Milkyway film, Comeuppance (2000). Tam proved to be the best thing about Born Wild (2001), garnering himself a second Hong Kong Film Award nomination and winning the Golden Horse Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In addition, Tam has been making a nice sum of money from his work on the small screen. He recently appeared with Ruby Lin in a television adaptation of Eighteen Springs and has recently been welcomed back to TVB with a starring role in a new series. (Yinique 2003)