Ruco Chan

Ruco Chan Chin-pang (; born 14 January 1977) is a Hong Kong actor and singer. Chan is the first TVB actor to win My Favourite TVB Actor at the StarHub TVB Awards for three consecutive years (2014, 2015, 2016), and is also the first actor to make two consecutive wins for Favourite TVB Actor at the TVB Star Awards Malaysia (2015, 2016). In 2016, Chan won the TVB Anniversary Award for Best Actor with his performance in the action drama A Fist Within Four Walls. Early life Chan was born in Hong Kong with ancestral roots from Xiamen, Fujian. His father was a firefighter and his mother was a tailor. Influenced by his father at a young age, Chan developed a love for table tennis and joined the Hong Kong Table Tennis team after receiving rigorous training at the Jubilee Sports Academy when he was thirteen. He was the youngest player to represent Hong Kong in overseas competitions at the time. After five years of committing to the sport, Chan left the team upon finishing his high school education exams. After graduation, Chan was accepted into a technical institution and, attracted by the 3,000 HKD monthly income, also joined TVB's Artiste Training Class. Being only seventeen at the time, Chan was required to have his parents' signed approval before signing a management contract with TVB. His father initially refused, but later gave in when TVB offered an automatic contract cancellation if Chan didn't do well in his classes. Chan graduated from TVB's Seventh Artiste Training Class of 1994. Career Chan's television debut was in the serial drama Instinct in 1994, where he briefly appeared as the young friend of Ekin Cheng's character Pao Man-lung. Weeks later, he made a brief appearance in the sitcom A Kindred Spirit as the friend of Andy, portrayed by Hawick Lau, who was Chan's training class classmate. For the next three years, Chan performed in minor roles in over eighteen TVB television dramas. Chan left TVB in 1998 after signing a record deal with PolyGram. Prior to the release of his debut EP, Universal acquired PolyGram and Chan's contract with PolyGram became defunct. For the next few years, Chan won several small supporting roles in various Hong Kong films. When he had no filming jobs, he would work as a renovation worker, earning only 300 HKD per day.