Getting acquainted with Chinese rising stars
BEIJING: The year 2017 has been prolific for the Chinese film industry so far and, Chinese actors are rising stars in the global film industry. Here is a list of some of the top 10 Chinese actors who are doing extremely well domestically, and (if not already) are likely to gain more international recognition in the coming years.
Kris Wu
Kris Wu has some pretty cool gigs in Hollywood this year — as Sergeant Neza in Luc Besson’s ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’, or Nick in this year’s ‘xXx’ movie, but his stardom in his native China is a lot more far-reaching. Wu is probably the fastest emerging young actor in China right now. Having started out as a member of the Korean-Chinese boyband EXO in 2012, he soon went on to record independently. He recorded the ending soundtracks for the third instalment of Guo Jingming’s ‘Tiny Times’ trilogy and China’s box office hit ‘Mr Six’. Wu landed his first lead acting role in 2014, in the Chinese romance ‘Somewhere Only We Know’, and has since gained international recognition.
Duan Yihong
Unlike most of his colleagues in China, Duan Yihong went to drama school and started out as a stage actor at the National Theatre Company of China. For two seasons in the early 2000s, he played the leading role in the renowned Chinese playwright Liao Yimei’s ‘Rhinoceros in Love’. Duan made his TV debut in the World War II series ‘The Proof Of Memories’, which gained him wide acclaim among Chinese audiences. Duan was last seen in New York City last month, attending the New York Asian Film Festival, during which both of the movies he starred in — ‘Battle of Memories’ and ‘Extraordinary Mission’ — made their debut on a New York screen.
Yang Yang
Yang was cast as mawkish protagonist Jia Baoyu in the TV adaptation of ‘The Dream of Red Mansions’, one of China’s four great classical novels. Although the 2010 show was generally thought to be mediocre, it made Yang a familiar face on the TV screen. His popularity rose in 2014 when he starred in another Web-TV adaptation of another extremely popular novel in China at the time, ‘The Lost Tomb’. The Chinese fantasy costume drama ‘Once Upon a Time’ (different from the ABC show) co-directed by the visual artist of the original ‘Spider Man 2’ film, in which Yang plays a major role is currently showing in cinemas in China.
Li Yifeng
Li Yifeng made his name as a singer in a Chinese talent show back in 2007. Since then, he’s released three EPs and two albums and made himself a household name among Chinese millennials in a TV series inspired by a popular video game “Swords of Legends”. Li also co-starred with Yang Yang as another male lead in ‘The Lost Tomb’. This year, he played a major role in the Chinese main melody film ‘The Founding of an Army’, which is currently showing in cinemas in China. Outside of music and acting, Li is also considered a fashion icon in his native China. He was one of the winners of the 2014 Elle Style Awards and was ranked No. 9 on the Forbes Chinese celebrity list in 2015. Li is currently touring major cities in China to promote his new film, ‘Guilty of Mind’, which was released in China on Aug 11.
Hu Ge
Hu Ge got his break in showbiz as a part-time host of an education channel on local Shanghai television and appeared in commercials throughout high school. He is most famous for his role in the video game-turned fantasy TV series Chinese Paladin and the historic film ‘China 1911’, which was co-directed by Jackie Chan. Hu took more than a year off from acting after being injured in a car accident in 2006, after which he wrote a book documenting his recovery. Some of his fans think he had a major personality change after the accident. Earlier this year, Hu was rumoured to be taking a break from acting to study directing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.