Lam first joined TVB in 1983, graduating from the TVB actor training class a few months later along with fellow actress Margie Tsang. She was cast in a number of movies as well as TVB serials, soon becoming well known as one of the TVB's Five Beauties. She was called "the most beautiful on the five-station hill". In 1992, Lam played the leading female role in a Taiwanese TV series. Taiwanese actress Di Ying who was also a member of the in the same series disliked Lam and assaulted her in a hotel lobby, where she kicked her in the stomach causing Lam to fall. Lam never worked with Taiwanese companies again. In 2005, Di recounted her assault on Lam on a Taiwanese variety show, calling her "Lam the big shot", long after Lam's retirement.
Personal life
She was in a relationship with a Hong Kong indigenous villager surnamed Tang, but Tang committed suicide in 1986, which greatly shocked her. From 1987 to 1988, she had a relationship with Cheng Kar-shing, a son of Hong Kong billionaire Cheng Yu-tung, but they eventually broke up. In 1995 and 1996, Lam's parents died in succession. It was said she broke up with her boyfriend afterwards. In 1998, she got into a car accident. She was admitted into a mental institution in 1999. Her stage career was completely shattered by then despite her showing up in a few TV serials or movies afterwards. Declared bankrupt in 2006, Lam subsequently lived on government welfare of HK$3,700 per month. In 2008, Lam was found wandering in the street smoking heavily and in her nightgown. Police later arrived after responding to a concerned pedestrian's call and sent her to Sheung Shui station. In March 2013, Lam was baptised as a Catholic at St. Anne's Church in Stanley and was given the Christian name Maria.
Rape allegations
In December 2013, Next Magazine obtained the video of an interview with Lam, in which she said that she had been raped by two Hong Kong entertainment industry "big brothers" more than two decades earlier. Lam stated that the first man, who had raped her after consuming alcohol, had died recently. Lam alleged that another man raped her during a film production in Singapore by obtaining a key to her room, breaking in at night, and raping her. She said that fears about his influence in the film industry dissuaded her from reporting the incident to the police. The interviewer had mentioned the names of the two accused men during the interview, and Lam acknowledged the names to be correct, but the audio portions were censored out of Next Magazine's published video; it is unknown if the edits were made by the magazine or by the original interviewer. Subsequently, an anonymous source cited on Sina News corroborated the alleged rape in Singapore and claimed that the important man had announced, to the film crew, his intention of "having fun" with Lam before he allegedly broke into her room. In January 2018, Chinese journalist uploaded what appeared to be the uncensored video of Yammie Lam's interview, which revealed the alleged rapists to be Eric Tsang and Alan Tang. A day later, the rape accusation against Eric Tsang was corroborated by Grace Han, a prominent talent agent who formerly headed the Ford Models agency in Asia. Han further alleged that Eric Tsang was a serial sexual predator, and claimed to know of a specific incident where a group of showbiz men led by Tsang drugged seven female models in a Hong Kong karaoke bar and raped six of them, while one model escaped. Tsang denied both the authenticity of the video and Grace Han's claims, and a week later, filed a defamation law suit at the Hong Kong High Court against Han. Several media outlets raised concerns that the audio portion of the 2018 video could have been edited, noting that the interviewer's voice increased in pitch from a male-sounding individual in the 2013 video to a female-sounding individual in the 2018 video. However, experts suggested that the most likely explanation was that the published 2013 video was digitally altered to disguise the identity of the interviewer, and that the interviewer was in fact female. They also point out that the 2018 video contained unremoved background noises, indicating that it was either the original video or in an earlier state of edit compared to the 2013 video, which had noise cancellation. This implies that the leaker had access to the original unedited video, and that the most probable leaker was the interviewer herself.
Death
On 3 November 2018, Lam was found dead in her apartment at Leung Ma House in Stanley, Hong Kong. Police noted that she was found in a decomposing state, and she was last seen alive on 31 October. In the evening of 9 November, a requiem mass was held for Lam at St. Anne's Church celebrated by Dominic Chan Chi-ming, the vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong. Hundreds of fans came to pay tribute to Lam. Some actors and actresses who played in The Greed of Man attended the mass. Dicky Cheung read the Scripture and gave a speech. Father Chan said that he had met Lam five years earlier, and that Lam had suffered a lot. Lam was cremated on 15 November 2018, and her ashes were interred at the St. Raphael Catholic Cemetery in Cheung Sha Wan.
