Katie Liu Leung (born 8 August 1987 in Motherwell, Scotland) is a Scottish actress of Chinese ancestry.
Katie is best known for her roles as Cho Chang in the Harry Potter series and Caitlyn Kiramman in Arcane. Leung was born in Dundee to Peter, who was a businessman, and Kar Wai Li Leung, who works in a law firm. Her parents are now divorced. She was raised in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire. An immigrant from Hong Kong, her father owns a successful Chinese restaurant named Regent in Glasgow and a Chinese wholesale firm named Jade Palace Trading. She attended secondary school at Hamilton College.
Katie's father saw an advertisement for a Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire casting call, and suggested she should try out. She waited four hours in line for a five-minute audition, and said that she would rather be shopping than stand in line for a role she was almost certain she wouldn't get. Two weeks later, she was called back for a workshop and was cast as Cho Chang, in the process beating out over 4,500 other girls for the part. She stated in an interview with the Daily Record that her Scottish accent probably gave her an edge in the casting.
She appeared in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in which she and Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) shared an on-screen kiss that received much media coverage. She later appeared in both parts of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Leung has contributed her voice to the video games Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
In July 2007, Katie Leung was cast by Gold Label Records, a subsidiary of EMI in Hong Kong, to be the female lead in the music video Love Coming Home (愛回家) by Leo Ku. Leung filmed the video in London while promoting the then-new Harry Potter film. Ku described Leung's acting as "professional" and "mature." Leung played Hsui Tai in the episode "Cat Among the Pigeons" of ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot, which premiered on ITV on 21 September 2008. Leung has been named as Scotland's most stylish female and as the hottest Scotswoman by The Scotsman. She has also been featured in Teen Vogue and in the Evening Standard.
Since 2021, she has voiced Caitlyn Kiramman in the Netflix hit cartoon Arcane. She is also currently starring in both Annika and The Peripheral.
Select Filmography:
Films
- Harry Potter as Cho Chang
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010)
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011)
- T2 Trainspotting (2017) as Nurse
- The Foreigner (2017) as Fan Quan
Television
- Poirot (2008) as Hsui Tai
- Run 2013 as Ying
- Father Brown (2014) as Jia-Li Gerard
- One Child (2014) as Mei Ashley
- Strangers 2018 as Lau Chen
- Moominvalley (2019-present) as Too-Tickynote
- Annika (2021–present) as Blair Ferguson
- Arcane (2021–present) as Caitlyn Kiramman
- The Peripheral (2022) as Ash
- The Chemistry Of Death (2023) as Maggie Cassidy
- The Wheel of Time (2023-present) as Yasicca
Video Games
- Harry Potter as Cho Chang
Tropes associated with her roles:
- Ability over Appearance: Cho is implied to be English in the books (her favourite Quidditch team is a Tutshill one, which is in Gloucestershire) and the audio books give her that accent. In the films Katie uses her natural Scottish accent. She actually said that at the audition, the casting director asked if any girls were from Scotland, and she was the only one.
- Actor-Shared Background: In the series Strangers, her character's mother worked in Hong Kong for years. Katie's mother likewise was a Hong Kong businesswoman before moving to the UK (although in-universe, the father has never been, and Katie's was likewise a Hong Kong native).
- The Cast Show Off: She demonstrates that she can switch between English and Mandarin in One Child.
- Career Resurrection: Katie took a break from acting after Harry Potter wrapped, and went to college for a few years. She then returned with the miniseries Run and One Child - receiving critical acclaim and being named a Breakthrough Brit of 2014 by BAFTA.
- Fake Brit: Despite being Scottish, she uses an English accent in Strangers. In Arcane, she voices Caitlyn in a British accent.
- Fake Nationality: Technically. She's second-generation Chinese, having been born in the UK, but has played many Chinese characters.
- Tom Hanks Syndrome: Distanced herself from Harry Potter by starring in the gritty miniseries Run - where she plays an illegal immigrant who has to pay debts to a smuggling ring. There's also her role in One Child - about a murder investigation.
