Sihung Lung, 72; Starred in Ang Lee Films

Sihung Lung, the Taiwanese actor who had pivotal roles in director Ang Lee’s well-regarded “Father Knows Best” trilogy of films, has died. He was 72.

Lung, who also appeared in Lee’s Academy Award-winning “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and acted in more than 100 Chinese-language films, died of liver failure at a hospital in Taipei on May 2.

Born in a village in mainland China, Lung completed his secondary school education and joined the Nationalist armies of Chiang Kai-shek as a teenager. He fled to Taiwan in 1949 in the face of the communist victory in the civil war.

While in his 20s, he started his acting career in an army theater group in Taipei. He participated in productions of Chinese and Western plays, including some Shakespeare.

By the age of 40, Lung was acting in Taiwanese television productions--basically soap operas--and was often cast as a heavy, playing tough guys.

“I learned to act in virtually any role during my army days, and I became very proficient on the stage. From small roles to large roles, comedy to drama, it was an excellent learning experience, and I knew that acting was what I wanted to do,” he told the publication Transpacific in an interview years ago.

But he had retired when Lee, who remembered seeing him in productions when he was a child, asked him to play the part of the father in “Pushing Hands,” the first of Lee’s trilogy in which a parent with grown children confronts a vastly changing world.

In that film, the father figure is a tai chi master who has come to America to live with his son and daughter-in-law in suburban New York.

Colleagues recalled that Lung, who knew nothing of tai chi before the filming, would rise each morning at 5 to take part in a tai chi class, learning enough to persuade audiences that he had a firm grasp of the discipline.

The title, “Pushing Hands,” refers to a tai chi exercise designed to help keep one’s balance while destroying that of one’s opponent and reflects the father figure’s struggle against his fate.

“The Wedding Banquet,” the second part of Lee’s trilogy, is a farce in which Lung plays a Taiwanese father who wants his New York-based son to marry, not knowing that he is gay. The son agrees to a marriage of convenience, but problems develop when his father and mother decide to fly to New York for the wedding.

In the final film in the trilogy, “Eat Drink Man Woman,” Lung plays a master chef who is also the father of three beautiful daughters who all live at home and who are all growing tired of the spectacular meals he throws together every Sunday.

Lung’s work in the “Father Knows Best” trilogy earned good critical marks and brought him to the attention of Western audiences.

His role of Sir Te, a wise court official in Beijing who receives the 400-year-old sword, the Green Dynasty, in Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” gained him more exposure.

For his work in “Pushing Hands,” Lung won a Golden Horse award, Taiwan’s only prize for motion pictures, in 1991. It was his second Golden Horse, after one in 1976 for best supporting actor.

A devout Catholic, Lung first married in his late 40s.

He had been in failing health for some time with diabetes, high blood pressure and clogged arteries.

He is survived by his wife, Pao Chia, a television producer, and their daughter.