Marrie Lee

Young was born on November 25, 1959 in Singapore to the contractor John Young and his wife Mary. She had an older brother named Jimmy and an older sister named Betty. Due to her father's work with the cinema owners and film distributors, around the very young age of four and five, Young often met Hong Kong film actors and actress while they were promoting their movie screenings in Singapore, making her considered acting as one of her life goals. Her father later died when she was six and her mother died when she was sixteen.

Following her graduation from St Anthony’s Convent Secondary School, Young worked as a receptionist in a nightclub (or restaurant) at Shenton Way in about 1976, where she was discovered by a scouting team from Hong Kong and she received her first acting role, a minor role as a female detective based in Singapore for the Hong Kong film Showdown at the Equator. She would also involved in minor roles in a couple of Hong Kong-based movies.

A year later in 1977, she answered a newspaper ad that asked "Are you smart, sexy and seductive?" The ad was placed by Suarez' BAS Film Productions, which was looking for a heroine who could ride a motorcycle. She auditioned in a miniskirt and boots and won the role among the 300 hopefuls.[1]

Her screen name, Marrie Lee, was created by the producers to capitalize on the fame of the late Bruce Lee. Due to this, during her filming in some occasions, there were fans went up to her and said that they had watched all his "brother's" films. "Some fans thought that I was his younger sister," she later told The Business Times in a 2005 interview.

She made her film debut at age 18, portraying the title character Cleopatra Wong in 1978's They Call Her Cleopatra Wong, a martial arts film shot in Singapore and Philippines about a female Interpol agent written and directed by Bobby A. Suarez.

She reprised the role in 1979's Dynamite Johnson, in which she was teamed up with the 10-year-old Singaporean tae kwon do practitioner, Johnson Yap, who reprise his role as Sonny Lee respectively from The Bionic Boy, a 1978 film also written and directed by Suarez. She reprised her role for the third time in Devil's Angels, in which she led an all-female team of crimefighters in the Philippines.[2]

In the early 1980s, Young was meant to co-star in a Filipino rendition of Superman to be directed by Suarez, with actor Weng Weng as its lead. The project never materialized.[3]

Her last role as Cleopatra Wong was probably on the film The Wandering Samurai as a supporting role which was released in around 1980 and 1981.

She performed her own stunts during her filming, including jumping through a real glass window and dangling from a helicopter,[4] and sustained many injuries, including a fractured left wrist.[5]

Young retired from acting in 1981 and managed a dance troupe The Devil's Angels (named after the members from her third Cleopatra Wong film) for two years, following that she was married and started a family. She later ran a healthcare company Tisco Pte Ltd with her sister from 1989 onwards.

During the Screen Singapore festival from August 1 to 31 in 2005,[6] Young was reunited with Bobby Suarez, with Suarez himself expressed his interest in doing a Cleopatra Wong reboot.

With Suarez died of a heart attack on February 8, 2010, Young inherited the franchise rights of Cleopatra Wong and its website.[7] Also that year, Mark Hartley's documentary film Machete Maidens Unleashed! premiered. Young is interviewed in the documentary that explores exploitation films made in the Philippines in the 1970s and 1980s.[8][9][10]

In December 2012, as Marrie Lee, she started a film making hobbyist group Reel Frenz Productions, working as a director, producer and writer. She had helped produced at least 12 short films since then.

In 2013, the documentary film The Search for Weng Weng started its film festival run.[11][12][13][14] In it Young was interviewed about the actor Weng Weng who was Philippines' first international star and a unique figure in cinema being a short person who performs death defying stunts.[3]

With the help of her partner Jacqueline, she expanded her healthcare company to Hong Kong in 2014. She later established a film making company Singapore Cinema Pte Ltd in February 2015 to oversee her feature film projects.[15] Her first directorial debut feature film Certified Dead was released in 2016.[16]

• Marrie Lee on IMDb
• www.reelfrenz.com
• singaporecinema.com

• Paul, Louis (2008). "Marrie Lee". Tales From the Cult Film Trenches; Interviews with 36 Actors from Horror, Science Fiction and Exploitation Cinema. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. pp. 157–163. ISBN 978-0-7864-2994-3.