On December 30, 2021, the “Golden Rooster Actors’ Forum: The Glory and Dreams of the Art of Acting” of the 34th Golden Rooster Awards and the 2021 China Golden Rooster & Hundred Flowers Film Festival was held in Xiamen. Wang Xiaotang, Simon Yam, Liu Mintao, Xiao Yang, Du Jiang, Yan Bingyan and other actors gathered to discuss the responsibilities and mission of actors.
Renowned performing artist Wang Xiaotang gave the opening address. Starting from her signature film Wildfire and Spring Wind in the Old City, she shared experience from her 65 years in film, which the audience found highly instructive. She summed up the qualities every actor needs in four words: self-reflection, confidence, ability and improvement. Quoting the lines “On idle days, spend little time at the mirror; when busy, still make time to read”, she urged younger filmmakers to keep reflecting on themselves and keep improving. “Bring the greatest passion to the role, and the greatest calm to yourself.”
“If you really feel you have hit a creative bottleneck or difficulty, sometimes you need to ask yourself whether you have drifted away from life,” actor Huang Bo once said in an interview. Cut off from the soil of life, acting becomes water without a source and a tree without roots. Several of the actors spoke from experience about the relationship between acting and life.
To play the policeman in Fireflies in the Sun, Simon Yam spent a long time watching ordinary police officers on patrol and on duty. He pared back his performance to bring out the most natural state of a veteran officer: “This is a story about ordinary people, so it has to feel real.” In daily life, Simon Yam, a keen painter, always carries a camera and a sketchboard to capture moments of inspiration, which become “nourishment” for future performances.
The “uncle” Xiao Yang played in Sister has a strong sense of real life; audiences both love and resent him, and the role earned him a nomination for Best Supporting Actor at this year’s Golden Rooster Awards. Speaking about the role, Xiao Yang said the “uncle” is so vivid because he is based on a real person, and he also epitomizes many Chinese men who are full of feeling and loyalty but afraid to express it. “Our teachers often told us to love life. Only if you love life can you notice what shines around you and feel the sadness and happiness of a character. Actors also need to look at today’s society and resonate with the times; only then can they tell Chinese stories well through ordinary people.”
In main-melody films such as Operation Red Sea, The Bravest and The Captain, Du Jiang has played a series of characters from specialized professions. To get close to characters so far removed from everyday life, experience and observation are especially important: “Before filming, we go to where the characters work, talk in depth with the people they are based on, and work and live alongside them. Actors need sharp observation to quickly grasp a character’s state; that is the best way to get close to a role.”
After many years in acting, Du Jiang has come to understand more deeply what his teachers often said, that “art comes from life but rises above it”: “This does not mean art is more advanced or refined; it means refining and condensing on the basis of understanding life.”
Yan Bingyan shared how she handles the relationship between life and acting: “I have always stayed close to life, and in daily life I try to make myself as transparent as possible. I don’t want audiences to remember who Yan Bingyan is; I want them to remember the role Yan Bingyan played. Only when you put all your strength into the role will the audience feel its full force.”
Liu Mintao, nominated for Best Actress at this year’s Golden Rooster Awards, shared her experience playing the mother in her nominated film Goodbye, Boy. The real life of the family the story was based on was the foundation of her portrayal: “I was deeply moved by their story. Actors are living people too, and should stay down to earth and immersed in the soil of life. Our teachers taught us to truly listen, truly see and truly feel, and I have always acted by that standard.”
“The play matters more than anything” expresses the professional ethics and artistic integrity behind the word “actor”.
For Simon Yam, “the play matters more than anything” is a kind of focused energy: “Once you put on the costume, you are the character. Put all your passion and love for the role into the work and forget everything else. Only with that focus can you strike sparks with your scene partner.” He recalled filming the key scene in Fireflies in the Sun in which he and Xiao Yang face each other through glass. Although it was the first scene they shot together, through Xiao Yang’s eyes he could feel Lin Rilang’s complex mix of helplessness and pain. That is the power of “focus”.
Xiao Yang believes that committing to the role and resisting outside distractions and temptations is an actor’s duty: “If you are not focused, you cannot do this job. Once an actor takes on a role, they have to live in the character’s world and not be disturbed by the outside. It is a matter of sincerity. If you are truly sincere, you will not play with your phone or games on set.”
“Only by committing one hundred percent and immersing yourself in the character’s world can you experience this kind of joy.” As Du Jiang sees it, devoting oneself fully to creation is the greatest joy the acting profession offers him: “It is also the way to earn the respect of your scene partners, your peers and yourself.”
The actors agreed that one must be a good person before being an artist, and realize one’s worth by pursuing both virtue and artistry. Liu Mintao has always remembered her teacher’s advice: “Be a down-to-earth person and act conscientiously.” So she never lets herself slack: “Acting is my only livelihood. Working hard may add a little to it; slacking off or losing focus may take a little away. When you communicate with the world with sincerity and true feeling, that is an actor’s happiest moment.”
Yan Bingyan said the word “persistence” is vital for actors. “Actors work in a world of fame and fortune, very close to things like fame and money that seem dazzling. But you have to be clear about what you should want, what you must not want, and what you must never touch. That is what persistence means.”
