Artists across the entertainment industry, including director Ang Lee (李安), yesterday paid tribute to Coco Lee (李玟), who died on Wednesday.
She was 48.
She will be dearly missed, Ang Lee said in a statement issued by his assistant.
Photo: AP
The Hong Kong-American singer-songwriter had hits including A Love Before Time (月光愛人) from Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍).
Coco Lee performed the song at the 73rd Academy Awards in 2001.
Ang Lee said he remembered her saying that as the first singer of Chinese descent taking to the Oscars stage, she planned to “sing with all her might.”
Taiwanese pop singer Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) on Wednesday on Facebook wrote “R.I.P., your bright smile will always be remembered.”
Singer Stella Chang (張清芳) said in a social media post that Coco Lee would “always be the best.”
Golden Bell Award-winning actor Wu Kang-ren (吳慷仁) wrote on Facebook that he listens to her songs when he feels down and thanked the singer for her incredible works.
Cyndi Wang (王心凌) and Little S (小S, also known as Dee Hsu, 徐熙娣), also paid tribute to the late singer.
Coco Lee died in hospital following a suicide attempt that had left her in a coma on Sunday, her sister Nancy Lee (李思林) said.
Coco Lee was diagnosed with depression several years ago and the condition had recently taken a turn for the worse, she said.
Hong Kong English-language newspaper the Standard reported that the singer died at Hong Kong’s Queen Mary Hospital.
The artist was born in 1975 in Hong Kong to a father of Chinese and Indonesian descent and a Hong Kong Cantonese mother.
Coco Lee’s father died before she was born, and her mother raised her and her two elder sisters in the territory before the family relocated to San Francisco when she was nine.
In 1993 she returned to Hong Kong to participate in the New Talent Singing Awards competition, where she placed second.
She was later offered a recording contract with Capital Artists.
One year later, she released her first Mandarin-language album in Taiwan, Love from Now On (愛就要趁現在), which quickly became a hit.
In 1998, she performed the song Reflection (自己) and provided the voice of the titular character in the Mandarin version of Disney’s Mulan (花木蘭).
Coco Lee also released several albums in English, including Coco’s Party and Just No Other Way.
As her popularity grew internationally, she was also invited to perform at the Michael Jackson and Friends charity concert.
Before her death, the singer had revealed that she was learning to walk again following an operation on her left leg earlier this year, disclosing that the issue had affected her throughout her life.
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