Actor

Karena Lam Kar-Yan

Acting

Career Snapshot

Explained

These indicators come from TMDB. They are relative signals, not review ratings.

Acting credits

Established

Large and steady acting portfolio.

TMDB popularity

1.7

Low visibility

TMDB internal trend index. Higher usually means more searches and page activity now.

Movies: 41Series: 4

TMDB ID: 126345

IMDb ID: nm1157324

Known for: Acting

Born: August 17, 1978

Age: 48

Place of birth: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Gender: Female

Adult content flag: No

Career span: 1962 - 2026

Years active: 65

Average TMDB rating: 5.96

Wikidata: Q709135

Also known as

Karena Lam • Kar Yan Lam • Karena Lam Ka-Yan • 林嘉欣 • 임가흔

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Biography

Karena was working at her Vancouver family restaurant when she was discovered by a talent scout from Taiwan in 1993, at age fifteen. The scout persuaded her to fly to Taiwan that Christmas, alone, for a singing audition in the hope of securing a professional contract. The audition was a success and she released two albums, her debut album in 1995 and her second album later in 1999. However both were met with modest success. Her film debut in 2002 changed all this and propelled her to real stardom. Karena starred in three successful Hong Kong films in the same year, winning the awards of Best Supporting Actress and Best New Performer for her role in July Rhapsody directed by Ann Hui (at the 2002 Hong Kong Film Awards) and for Inner Senses by Lo Chi Leung (at the Taiwan Golden Horse Awards), gaining her recognition as a talented young actress and marking the start of her film career. In recent months she has been taking on much more challenging roles, as witnessed in the 2005 horror film Home Sweet Home, where she plays an insane and horribly deformed "phantom" monster who kidnaps a boy from his genetic mother to claim as its own, and was nominated for major awards again.