Katie Leung's Transatlantic Childhood Shaped Her Path from Harry Potter to Bridgerton
Katie Leung, who played Cho Chang in the Harry Potter films and now appears as Araminta Gun in Netflix's Bridgerton, grew up moving between Scotland and Hong Kong — a pattern that she says influenced her social life and travel habits during her teenage years. That split upbringing, driven by her father’s work, intersected with her acting career and public profile in ways she has described publicly.
Katie Leung's early life: Dundee birth, family names and frequent moves
Born in August 1987 in Dundee, Scotland, Leung is the daughter of Hong Kong businessman Peter Leung and Kar Wai Li. Her parents divorced early in her childhood, and she continued to live in Scotland with her father while her mother returned to Hong Kong. Because of her father’s work, the family relocated often, and Leung spent significant parts of her youth moving between towns in Scotland and Hong Kong.
Leung has said that these relocations shaped how she spent her teenage years. She described enjoying an active social life and recalled frequent trips to Hong Kong: she traveled there four times in a single year at one point, despite the journey being about a 16-hour flight from Scotland. Those long-haul trips and the rhythm of moving between two distinct regions framed much of her adolescence.
Bridgerton's Araminta Gun and earlier role as Cho Chang in Harry Potter
On screen, Leung followed a path from the global blockbuster franchise to a high-profile streaming drama. She is known for portraying Cho Chang in the Harry Potter films, and she currently appears as Araminta Gun on the Netflix series Bridgerton. The contrast between a young performer in a major film series and a lead in a period romance on a global streaming platform highlights the range of projects that have defined her career.
Her movement between countries during childhood provides a concrete connection to the international nature of those roles. Because she grew up splitting time between two cultures and often endured long flights to maintain that connection, her background resonates with the cross-border attention that comes with roles in both a major film franchise and a Netflix drama.
What makes this notable is how those personal histories can inform a performer’s onscreen presence: frequent travel and a bicultural upbringing can contribute to an adaptability that casting directors and audiences notice. In Leung’s case, the measurable details — a Dundee birth in August 1987, parents named Peter Leung and Kar Wai Li, a household split after an early divorce, and repeated transatlantic trips amounting to four visits in one year — are not just biographical footnotes but part of the practical scaffolding of her life and career.
Leung’s account of enjoying Hong Kong’s social scene during her teens and making multiple long journeys back and forth underscores a pattern of movement and exposure to different cultural environments. That pattern both preceded and accompanied her emergence into internationally visible acting roles.
As she continues to appear in high-profile projects, those early-life dynamics remain a clear thread linking her private history to her public work. The combination of a Dundee upbringing, regular travel to Hong Kong, and roles in globally consumed productions like Harry Potter and Bridgerton offers a compact portrait of an actor whose life has been shaped by mobility and cultural crossover.
