Think of Andy Lau, 59, on the big screen and your mind would most likely conjure images of the Heavenly King as a hero who a) saves the day and gets the girl and b) saves the girl and gets his way. Throughout his almost four decade-long career, he has mostly played good guys, which shouldn't be a stretch for him since Andy, in real life, is known for being an all-round good guy too.

Andy once revealed in an interview that he rejects playing stereotypical villains, and avoids risqué sex scenes in his movies for one reason: He doesn’t want to “teach his fans bad things”, especially the young and impressionable ones.

But if a role really, really needs him to be on the dark side, or if the character does something criminal, Andy has one requirement before he signs on to play it: that the character must die by the time the end credits roll.

The times he played criminals, petty or otherwise, like his mob enforcer in Wong Kar Wai’s As Tears Go By (1988) and the wily drug lord in 2007’s Protege, all ended up with his characters biting the dust.

Okay, so his triad member masquerading as a policeman baddie in Infernal Affairs didn’t die but that guy ended up crippled and catatonic and trapped in his own mental hell, which let’s be honest, is a fate worse than death.

Even the cruel warlord who finds redemption as a Shaolin monk that he played in the 2011 movie Shaolin also ended up six feet under 'cos well, didn’t we mention that he started the movie being very cruel?

Photos: Weibo