Kyaw Hein facts for kids

Kyaw Hein (ကျော်ဟိန်း, [tɕɔ̀ héɪɰ̃]) was a very famous actor, film director, and singer from Myanmar (formerly Burma). He was born Kyaw Htay on July 14, 1947, in Yangon. He became one of the most important actors in Burmese cinema. He starred in and directed many films.

Kyaw Hein won the prestigious Myanmar Motion Picture Academy Awards five times for his amazing acting. In 2008, he decided to leave his acting career. He became a Theravada Buddhist monk, known as Kittisāra (ကိတ္တိသာရ). He passed away as a monk in Canberra, Australia, on July 11, 2020.

Early Life and Education

Kyaw Hein was born on July 14, 1947, in Sanchaung township, Yangon. His father, John Maung Sein, was a retired police chief. His mother was a housewife named Cho Cho. Kyaw Hein was the fourth of six children in his family.

He started school in 1952. He moved to different schools many times during his childhood. He even attended 23 different private schools in Yangon. He also left school several times. In 1966, he joined the Myanmar Navy for a short period. After leaving the Navy in 1967, he went back to school and finished tenth grade. Soon after, he began his career in the film industry.

Film Career

Kyaw Hein started his acting career in 1968 with the film Hpuza Lanzon when he was 20 years old. He became widely known after his fourth film, Chit Tha-La Mon Tha-La. His wife, Sandar, also became an actress in 1970.

He played many different roles in films. Some of his most famous movies include A-Ka Ga A-Chit A-Hnit Ga Myitta (1979), Mun-Tet Chein Hma Ne Win Thi (1982), Pan Myaing Le Ga U-Yin Hmu (1989), and Nay Ga Mway De La (2003). These films helped him win four Myanmar Motion Picture Academy Awards for Best Actor. He also won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1994. In total, he received five Academy Awards.

Kyaw Hein also became a film director. He directed his first film, Sein Shoet Mahote Sein, in 1970. He even designed and hand-painted the movie poster for it! He was highly praised for directing the 1982 film Mun-Tet Chein Hma Ne Win Thi.

Besides acting and directing, Kyaw Hein wrote many short stories and novels. He was also the highest-paid actor for television commercials at one point. He worked with many Burmese musicians and produced some of his own music. His last film as a director was Kyaoe Taan.

Over his 41-year career, from 1967 to 2008, Kyaw Hein starred in and made over 222 films. He also appeared in 362 video films. He wrote fourteen songs and six books.

Becoming a Monk

On November 4, 2008, Kyaw Hein decided to retire from the film industry. He chose to become a Theravada Buddhist monk. Before becoming a monk, he traveled all over Burma to say his final goodbyes to his fans.

He was officially ordained as a monk on July 11, 2020, in Canberra, Australia. As a monk, he was known by the name Sayadaw U Kittithara. In 2008, Sayadaw U Kittithara helped create a large Bronze Buddha Image at Botataung Pagoda in Yangon. Some people even called the temple "Kyaw Hein's temple" because of his help.

Death

Kyaw Hein's health declined after he had a stroke three years before his death. Sayadaw U Kittithara passed away on July 11, 2020, in Canberra. He was 73 years old. It was a sad coincidence that his nephew, Htin Lin (Dwe), also died on July 11, but in 2007.

Filmography

• Phoo Sar Lan Sone (ဖူးစာလမ်းဆုံ) (1969)
• Nu Nu Nge Nge (နုနုငယ်ငယ်) (1970)
• Kanyar Pyo Nae Zayar Ao (ကညာပျိုနဲ့ဇရာအို) (1972)
• Kyun Not Ko Sar Pyaw Pay Par (ကျွန်တော့်ကိုယ်စားပြောပေးပါ) (1976)
• Ta Oo Ka Saytanar Ta Oo Ka Myittar (တစ်ဦးကစေတနာတစ်ဦးကမေတ္တာ) (1976)
• Mahuyar (မဟူရာ) (1976)
• Ananda Chit Thu (အနန္တချစ်သူ) (1978)
• Lu Zaw (လူဇော်) (1978)
• Ta Khar Ka Ta Bawa (တစ်ခါကတစ်ဘဝ) (1978)
• Manawhari Ah Hla (မနော်ဟရီအလှ) (1979)
• A Kar Ka A Chit A Hnit Ka Myittar (အကာကအချစ်၊ အနှစ်ကမေတ္တ) (1979)
• San Eain Ko Sein Nat Mhoon Pa Mal (စံအိမ်ကိုစိန်နဲ့မွှန်းပါ့မယ်) (1980)
• Khon Na Hlwar Myat Nar (ခုနစ်လွှာမျက်နှာ) (1981)
• Pyin Ma Ngote To (ပျဉ်းမငုတ်တို) (1981)
• Moon Tae Chain Twin Nay Win The (မွန်းတည့်ချိန်တွင် နေဝင်သည်) (1982)
• Tay Zar (တေဇာ) (1981)
• Bone Pyat Ba Maung (ဘုံပြတ်ဘမောင်) (1983)
• Nay Kyauk Khae (နေကျောက်ခဲ) (1983)
• Sein Nae Tay Zar (စိမ်းနဲ့တေဇာ) (1983)
• Chit Tae Yet Ko Kyo Nay Mal (ချစ်တဲ့ရက်ကိုကြိုနေမယ်) (1983)
• Mount Ah Chit Thiri (မောင့်အချစ်သီရိ) (1984)
• Ah Chit Lu Zoe Lay (အချစ်လူဆိုးလေး) (1984)
• Lwan Nay Mal Ma Ma (လွမ်းနေမယ်မမ) (1986)
• Myat Yay Sane (မျက်ရည်စိမ်း) (1988)
• Pan Myaing Lal Ka Oo Yin Mhu (ပန်းမြိုင်လယ်က ဥယျာဉ်မှူး) (1989)
• Sone Yay (စုန်ရေ) (1990)
• Thamee Khway Ma Thar Thamat (သမီးချွေးမသားသမက်) (1991)
• Chit Lonn Kay Thi (ချစ်လွန်းကေသီ) (1992)
• Ah Phayt Darr (အဖေ့ဓား) (1992)
• Pyar Yay San Thaw Pann Darr (ပျားရည်ဆမ်းသောပန်းဓား) (1992)
• Maung Yin Nga Tay Mike Kan The (မောင်ရင်ငတေမိုက်ကန်းသည်) (1993)
• Darr Taung Ko Kyaw Ywayt Mee Pin Lal Ko Phyat Me (ဓားတောင်ကိုကျော်၍မီးပင်လယ်ကိုဖြတ်မည်) (1994)
• Wai Lae Hmway Kyway Lae Hmway (ဝေလည်းမွှေးကြွေလည်းမွှေး) (1994)
• Nyoe Man Pwat Sane Yat Lay Tha Lar (ငြိုးမာန်ဖွဲ့စိမ်းရက်လေသလား) (1996)
• Nay Ka Mway Tae La (နေကမွေးတဲ့လ) (2003)
• Kyee Yaung Saung Thaw Daung (ကျီးယောင်ဆောင်သောဒေါင်း) (1985)
• Yamat Zaw (ရမ္မက်ဇော) (1985)
• Nwet Soe (နွဲ့ဆိုး) (1986)
• Sein Shoet Mahote Sein (စိန်သို့မဟုတ်စိမ်) (1971)
• Oasis Lo Ah Chit Ah Kyaung (အိုအေစစ်လိုအချစ်အကြောင်း) (1997)
• Nha Lone Thar Nyoe Wat Khan (နှလုံးသားလျှိူ့ဝှက်ခန်း) (1999)
• Maw Ha Myin Pyaing Myar (မောဟမျဥ်းပြိုင်များ) (2000)
• Swe Myo Taw Yin Bal Lo Khaw Ma Lal (ဆွေမျိုးတော်ရင်ဘယ်လိုခေါ်မလဲ) (2001)
• Ah Phay (အဖေ) (2002)
• Kyoe Tann (ကြိုးတန်း) (2008)
• Maw King U Tann (မော်ကင်းဥဒါန်း) (2012) (P.S-Filming has been completed since 2004, but was not released until 2012.)

Discography

Albums

• Let The Tear Birds Perch (မျက်ရည်ငှက်များ နားစေသတည်း)
• Gentlemen, Please Applaud (လူကြီးမင်းများ လက်ခုပ်တီးပါ)
• Yin Mar Tin Set Mu (2) (ယင်းမာတင်ဆက်မှု (၂))
• Self Wind Sailing (တစ်ကိုယ်တော်လေလွင့်ခြင်း)
• Songs From The Stage (စင်ပေါ်က သီချင်းများ)
• Meaningful Person (အဓိပ္ပါယ်ရှိသောလူ)
• Forever Living (ထာဝရရှင်သန်နေမယ်)
• Wi Ra Ra Tha (ဝီရရသ)
• New (အသစ်)
• Dote Dote Dote Dote (ဒုတ် ဒုတ် ဒုတ် ဒုတ်)
• Modern Antique (မော်ဒန်အင်းတစ်ခ်)
• Meaningful (အဓိပ္ပါယ်ရှိသော)
• November - 11 (နိုဝင်ဘာ - ၁၁)
• The Next (It was eventually used as the theme song in the Kyaw Hein video.)

Books

About His Life

• Say It On My Behalf (ကျွန်တော့်ကိုယ်စားပြောပေးပါ ) (Novel) (1975, 2nd 1984)
• Colorful Pieces (ရောင်စုံအပိုင်းအစများ ) (Short Stories) (2002, 2nd 2008)
• Sate Dar Pya - Dwe's Memorabilia Letter (စိတ်ဓားပြ - ကွယ်လွန်သူ ဒွေးရဲ့ အမှတ်တရစာ) 
• Many Kyaw Heins (ကျော်ဟိန်းများ ) (Kyaw Hein's Forty Years History) (16-November-2009)
• Acting Book (သရုပ်ဆောင်ကျမ်း)
• Complete White (လုံးဝအဖြူ) (Comic Story Book)(1st+2nd) (About Kyaw Hein)

About Being a Monk

• Sate Dar Pya Thay Char Lar...Tae (စိတ်ဓားပြ သေချာလား . . . တဲ့)
• Lesson (သင်ခန်းစာ)
• For The Reason The Question Emerged (မေးခွန်းဖြစ်လာရတဲ့ ဖြစ်ကြောင်းကြောင့်) (October-2009)
• Let go of the feelings you feel (ခံစားနေတဲ့စိတ်ကို စွန့်လွှတ်လိုက်ပါ) (December-2009)

Awards