On the hills of the British Properties in North Vancouver, Leslie Cheung found peace and tranquility. Ensconsed in a mansion surrounded by greenery and water, the Canto-pop king of Hong Kong hid his depression.

A gay man in a Chinese society intolerant of gays, Vancouver offered him a place where he neither had to explicitly acknowledged his homosexuality or suppress it.

On April 1st, the depression that haunted Leslie Cheung, the fear of losing fans with the passage of time and other matters that bedevilled the talented superstar took him to the 24th floor of the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong.

There he sipped orange juice, wrote a suicide note on hotel stationery, enjoyed his last view of the Victoria Harbour, made a phone call to his ex-manager and then jumped to his death.

Those who worked with Leslie Cheung, like Hong Kong movie director Clifton Ko, remember him as a perfectionist.

"When I went to Vancouver to ask him to make a come-back in the movies since he last hung up his microphone, I get the feeling that he is totally at peace with himself. I think it must be his perfectionist nature which drove him to such an end." News that the Hong Kong star Leslie Cheung had killed himself stunned many around the world.

In Vancouver and Richmond, fans rushed to video and music outlets to grab everything Leslie Cheung. In Hong Kong, a region already unnerved by the outbreak of the SARS contagion, the reaction to Leslie's dreadful April Fool's shock was swift and volcanic.

His Hong Kong fans, many of them in audible tears, clogged the radio shows with their grief and love. The www.lesliecheung.com website, which offered fans worldwide a memory book to sign, received so many hits it was virtually impossible to get through for 24 hours.

Cheung Kwok-wing was born September 12, 1956, in Hong Kong.

"I'm one of ten children," he told TIME magazine in early 2001.

"I'm the youngest and the loneliest. The one closest to me is eight years older. My brothers would be dating girls and I was left alone in the corner, playing G.I. Joe or with my Barbie Doll. I never lived with my father for one single day, never. My father used to beat my mother up. It was terrible. And I always used to think, 'This what they call marriage.'"

Cheung's father was a tailor to the stars: William Holden, Alfred Hitchcock.

"My Dad had a fortune. We're from Canton province and at one point we were the largest landowners in the province. My grandfather got killed during the Cultural Revolution because he owned too much land." Leslie Cheung said that he helped support most of his six surviving siblings.

"I'm a blessing. Aside from my elder sister, who is very well-educated and doing OK, my brothers and sisters aren't doing very well, so I do help them out sometimes. But I've no regrets. Blood is thicker than water."

At 11, Kwok-wing took math and verbal exams to get into secondary school. "I failed the regulations. I won awards for prose readings and music festivals but not the maths. My father called me up and asked if I wanted to study abroad. I thought it would liberate me. My situation had been miserable to that point. So I got on the plane and went to the Norwich School [in Norfolk, England]."

At Norwich, Kwok-hing had to make a lot of readjustments.

"There were racial problems, discrimination. But it still enabled me to see more things. I could take a train to London. So I didn't feel lonely. During weekends I used to go to Southend-on-Sea to see my relatives; they ran a restaurant there, so I was a bartender. I'd start doing performances. I was only 13 years old, but I'd do amateur singing every weekend." By this time he had chosen his English name. "I love the film Gone with the Wind. And I like Leslie Howard. The name can be a man's or woman's, it's very unisex, so I like it. It's rare in Hong Kong, too."

After a year studying textile management at the University of Leeds, he returned to Hong Kong and placed second (singing American Pie) in ATV's Asian Music Contest.

He was an immediate pop star, and stayed at the top for a quarter century. In the late 70s, as now, pop singers were encouraged to do movies, and at 21 Leslie made his film debut in a cheapo production, Erotic Dream of the Red Chamber, which was notable only for the first unveiling of his silky derriere (later almost a trademark).

He appeared in a few TV dramas, including The Wu Lin Family, with a teenage Maggie Cheung. But the small screen couldn't contain his smoldering appeal. Leslie had a thing or two to teach Hong Kong about movie masculinity.

His acting career took off in 1986 when he starred opposite Hong Kong actor Chow Yun-Fat in John Woo's gangster movie A Better Tomorrow. The Oscar-nominated 'Farewell My Concubine' saw him rise to international fame as the film was a worldwide art house success.

In the film Cheung played a gay opera singer who falls in love with a fellow performer.

Other film roles included Happy Together and Days of Being Wild, directed by Wong Kar-wai. Leslie Cheung's closest confidante and lover was Daffy Tong who is now the prime beneficiary of the fortune amassed by the super star.

Hong Kong media said Leslie and Tong have four companies, 4 cars - Mercedes Benz S320 a Porsche 911 sports car , a Silver Volkswagen Beetle, a Land Rover SUV and properties in Hong Kong, Thailand and Canada.

Two unnamed friends of the couple told a Hong Kong newspaper, Apple Daily, that Leslie had drawn up a will after a previous suicide attempt in November. They claimed that Leslie had bequeathed most of his assets to Tong, whom Leslie had affectionately referred to as Tong-tong. The paper estimated his wealth to be at least HK$300 million (C$68 million).

Tong had been Leslie's financial advisor, and was the one who helped to build up his vast fortune. Tong told media that he knows about the will but that he has never seen it.

Tong also refuted rumours that the actor and Cantopop superstar had taken his life because of a broken heart.

He tried to set the record straight in an impromptu press conference following the suicide outside his home in Hong Kong.

"We have always been getting along fine throughout our 10-year-odd relationship," said Tong. "There was never a third party. My feelings for him are still the same. I knew he was depressed. I spent a lot of time comforting him, counselling him."

Hong Kong reporters had staked out Tong's home since the suicide, hoping to get some answers from the man widely rumoured to be at the centre of Leslie's depression.

He spoke to them from behind the gates of his home. He cited Leslie's work as the main reason for his depression.

"There was some trouble in his career. There are other factors, too. It's very complicated.

"I know what it is, but I'm not going to tell. I will wait for his family to make the first move. Don't worry, I'll give the fans and the public an answers eventually." said Tong who was dressed only in a white bathrobe, with his hair dishevelled and eyes swollen and red from crying.

In a stunning revelation, Tong disclosed that Leslie had tried to take his life with sleeping pills last November, but was unsuccessful.

As every single public detail of his life and death was played out in the Hong Kong media, one strange twist stood out.

Leslie Cheung was not alone in his last, dramatic moments.

He had arranged for his ex-manager, Florence Chan Suk Fan to witness his jump.

Hong Kong newspaper reports said that the man who loved an audience had orchestrated the incident. Apple Daily, quoting sources, said Leslie had called Ms Chan on her handphone and asked her to meet him at the street-level coffee-house of the Mandarin Oriental at 6pm on April 1.

When Ms Chan arrived, she didn't see Leslie at the coffee-house. She waited for half an hour before calling him on his handphone.

The newspaper said Leslie told her he was caught in a traffic jam, and would be arriving in a while. But Leslie was already at the hotel's private club on the 24th floor.

Minutes later, he rang Ms Chan and asked her to wait for him at the taxi-stand outside the hotel. The star then plunged 24 floors to his death. She was not the only person that Leslie is said to have called before his death jump. A call was also made to Madam Chan Lam, wife of movie mogul Heung Wah Keung. And another was to his long-time boyfriend, Daffy Tong.

Meanwhile, the family of Leslie Cheung has taken out a court order against an autopsy on his body. They do not want him to be 'disturbed' in death. Thousands of fans from Hong Kong and overseas turned up for his funeral.