RIP Bill Lake

I was saddened this week to learn of the passing of Bill Lake. As most of your will know, Bill was one of the earliest foreign actors in the HK movie industry and had quite an extensive list of roles to his name over the years (HKMDB) including a few TV roles in the early 80s as well.

I first met Bill at a Gwulo dinner circa 2015 and we had fairly regular meet ups in the intervening time, often with David Bellis (Gwulo head honcho) and myself heading over to Sai Kung to sit in Bill's favourite venue (the Duke of York) for a large pint of lemonade. He was definitely a bit of a raconteur and shared lots of stories with us about his time in Hong Kong and the various roles he was involved in during the 1970s and 80s. His later life was dedicated to researching the history of Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation and is why Gwulo became a shared point of (historical) interest.

Bill posing at the Duke of York

Back in 2022, smack in the middle of Covid, I persuaded him to partake in an interview about his film career with my good buddy Arnaud (see here) and it was not long after this that he found out he had cancer. Despite this he was fairly stoic about it all and never complained about his predicament. In fact he was very matter-of-fact with me about it in our various updates over the past few years. This also seemed to give him the impetus to get a book written about his life and he was able to send me a copy a few weeks back.

Anyway, rest in peace Bill.