Karl Maka (Chinese:麥嘉) is a Hong Kong film producer, director, actor and presenter. He was born on 29 February 1944 in Taishan, China. He is known for being the "bald " detective comedian in Hong Kong and won the best actor award in 1982's Hong Kong Film Awards. One of his popular movie roles is in Aces Go Places (最佳拍檔) in which he acted alongside Sam Hui.

Biography

Karl Maka moved to Hong Kong in 1958 from Taishan, mainland China. Five years later he emigrated to New York City where he studied as an engineer. While in America he worked for the telephone company in New Jersey. During this time he acquired the brand of humor, markedly American in style, that was to become a hallmark of his later work. Maka returned to Hong Kong in 1973. He quickly got into the film business – first as an assistant director and then in 1976 directed his first film.

It was in 1980 though when he formed the film company Cinema City along with Raymond Wong and Dean Shek that Maka was fully able to put his Western influenced comedic imprint upon his films. In 1982, Maka made the first Aces Go Places film with Sam Hui and Sylvia Chang (who he was married to but has since divorced). These films were tremendously popular in Hong Kong. During the first part of the '80s, Cinema City was extremely successful – producing a number of comedies that did well and introducing many stars to the public. They also acted as the producers for Tsui Hark’s production company, Film Workshop, and therefore are partly responsible for such classics as Shanghai Blues, Peking Opera Blues and A Better Tomorrow and they also produced films such as Ringo Lam’s On Fire series. Towards the end of the '80s, Cinema City fell upon hard times when a number of their films collapsed at the box office, with Dragon from Russia (1990) being the final nail in their financial coffin. Maka essentially left the film industry by 1991 and began focusing on the real estate business – but the downturn in the real estate sector during the Asian crash of the late '90s generated large financial losses for Maka.

In 2000 Maka returned to the film business with his old partner Sam Hui in the geared for the Chinese New Year film Winner Takes All 2000 – but it unfortunately did not fare well at the box office and Maka admitted that perhaps his style of family comedy is no longer popular.