HONG KONG - Former Hong Kong actress Susanna Au Yeung Pui San, who played Huang Rong in the 1983 TV adaptation of The Return Of The Condor Heroes, died of lung cancer on Sunday (July 9) afternoon. She was 63.

According to online reports, she had shown signs of a stroke in April while on holiday in Kuala Lumpur with her actor husband Samuel Kwok Fung, 65, and underwent several rounds of brain surgery there. It was only after the third operation that doctors discovered she had been suffering from lung cancer - often described as a silent killer - and she was flown back to Hong Kong to receive treatment.

In an Apple Daily report, Kwok was quoted on Sunday as saying, amid tears: "There was no medication that could cure her, so it led to this very unfortunate end. I am devastated."

Au Yeung, who debuted as an actress in the 1960s, starred in many hit Hong Kong TV dramas such as The Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1979) alongside Chow Yun Fat and The Passenger (1979) with Louise Lee and Gigi Wong Suk Yee.

Her most famous role, however, was that of Huang Rong in The Return Of The Condor Heroes, which also featured Bryan Leung Ka Yan as her husband Guo Jing, and Andy Lau as Yang Guo.

She married Kwok in 1977 after acting with him in the Hong Kong TV drama Awakenings (1975). The couple have no children.

In 1993, she quit acting to become an acupuncturist and qigong master.