Exclusive | ‘It’s like a restart for me’: Chinese actress Fan Bingbing on relaunching her career in Green Night after tax scandal, and why staying grounded is ‘important’
- Fan was at the Berlin film festival promoting new film Green Night, and revealed ‘the biggest challenge’ was returning to acting after her enforced absence
- The X-Men star also talked about why staying humble helps her perform, how shooting in Hollywood and China is different and her plans for more films in English
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In a first-floor corridor of the Grand Hyatt Berlin hotel, Fan Bingbing is applying her own make-up, holding up a small compact mirror and tilting her head backwards as she touches up her mascara.
Fan, however, doesn’t seem to care about the makeshift nature of her makeover or the fact that, in a minute or so, we’ll be chatting on two stools in the corner of said corridor, as festivalgoers walk past, blithely unaware of who is sitting there.
It’s surprising, then, how low-key she is in person.
Today she’s wearing a light-pink crochet jumper with tassels, white sneakers and dark jeans bedecked with glitter. It’s a cute outfit, but down to earth. There’s no sign of any expensive designer wear, and she isn’t surrounded by a huge entourage.
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Is she always this grounded? “For me, I really feel it’s important to maintain this sort of life,” she tells the Post in an interview, “because then you can see the details of real people, in real life, and then I can bring those emotions and experiences into acting. So it’s really helpful for me to stay grounded.”
Her director, back at the festival for the first time since 2020 with her film Summer Blur, explains that this is simply how Fan is. “Actually, she’s very straightforward and frank rather than a ‘star star’,” she says. “She’s very warm with the crew. And she’s a human being rather than an idol.
“She had a very good relationship with other members in the crew on [the] set [of Green Night].”
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It is 16 years since Fan was last at the Berlin festival with her 2007 film Lost in Beijing, but the big point here is that the actress is back at all – after a protracted hiatus.
As most followers of Fan will know (and she has a lot; 3.8 million on Instagram to be precise), it’s been a trying time for the actress.
She later issued a statement on Chinese microblogging platform Weibo apologising for her actions which read in part: “Without the good policies of the Communist Party and the state, without the people’s love and care, there would be no Fan Bingbing.”
Whatever happened then, she is ready to put it behind her. Shortly after we meet in Berlin at a press conference for Green Night, a reporter asks her to reflect on that period of her life.
While the moderator tried to steer it back to the film to help her evade a potentially awkward question, Fan answered with confidence.
“I was at home, I was dealing with some things. But, you know, everybody’s life has highs and lows. And when you reach a low, you steadily, gradually climb back up again. And it’s a tough process.
“But you learn a lot of new things at the same time, and you learn a lot about the world, a lot about people. And for me, it was a very good experience in retrospect … and everything’s fine with me now.”
In some respects, it’s an answer that says very little about the realities behind those lows, although it’s clear how delighted she is to be back.
It’s quite cruel on you if you don’t act for five years, because I love performing
In Green Night, the actress plays Jin Xia, a Chinese immigrant living in Korea with an abusive, fundamentalist Christian husband.
The film has already drawn comparisons to Ridley Scott’s Thelma & Louise for its feminist slant, as two women attempt to find agency in a male-dominated world.
“She always had this longing in her heart to get out and to be free and do something crazy,” says Fan of her character, “but she just didn’t have that match to set it off. Right? So she was waiting for that moment.
“And the green-haired girl was that thing that really set her off. So she was able to let go and escape her relationship and her boring job.”
It’s clearly been a rejuvenating experience for Fan, especially given she’s working with a female director, female producer and female co-star.
“I felt there was a lot of unspoken understanding between us and a type of warmth that we were able to share because we were all female. Not to say anything against men, but just to say that there was this kind of camaraderie between us because we were an all-female team,” she says.
“Maybe issues that women have, men don’t really understand that well … so we felt that we really got each other.”
In the film, the two main characters find solace in each other’s arms in a love scene that might shock some of Fan’s more conservative fans. The men don’t come out of the film well, we put it to the actress. The green-haired girl’s paymaster, for example, is a deaf-mute sadist.
“We don’t emphasise the badness of the males specifically,” Fan says, “but actually just how the women are together … that warmth between them and that understanding. It helped them rely on each other.”
Green Night might seem like a rather small project for an actress who, between 2013 and 2017, was ranked the highest-paid person on the Forbes China Celebrity 100 rich list.
In that time she ran her own company, Fan Bingbing Studio, became an ambassador for designer fashion brands such as Montblanc and De Beers, and launched her own skincare brand, Fan Beauty Secret.
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‘I was doing well at home’: Chinese film star Fan Bingbing returns to cinema in Berlin
It’s little wonder Time magazine put her on its 100 Most Influential People list in 2017 (“a woman who knows her own strength,” remarked fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg. “She is the woman she wants to be”).
This comeback feels like baby steps for Fan, who is still in the process of rescuing her reputation. As Fan noted at her Berlin press conference, “the biggest challenge was basically that I haven’t acted for five years.”
By and large it is true she has not acted since the tax issue came to light; she’s obviously discounting The 355 (as one should – it was terrible), which was mostly shot in 2019. Fan said: “It’s quite cruel on you if you don’t act for five years, because I love performing.”
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On the surface, easing her way back into Asian cinema via a film that deals with the Chinese-Korean immigrant crossover seems like a smart move.
Will she choose another English-language project any time soon? “Yes, we’re reviewing some screenplays right now,” she says. “So maybe my English will get better and better.”
Perhaps she could return as Blink, her X-Men character who was capable of teleportation? Now Disney controls the rights to Marvel’s mutant heroes, there’s every chance they will be rebooted in another movie series.
“I would definitely love to reprise my role as Blink,” she says. “Her abilities were really cool!”
Fan is accustomed to appearing in Chinese epics, such as Chen Kaige’s 2010 historical tale Sacrifice, so did it feel different to be in a blockbuster like X-Men: Days of Future Past?
“Hollywood is so developed and they really know every single minute what they’re going to do on set and what you have to be doing,” Fan says. “And [they’re] very on track and on top of things. It was different from shooting in China, but I was able to learn a lot from that experience.”
Her Green Night director feels like this is a different Fan that we’re seeing now, a more seasoned performer. “I think she’s become a more mature and grown-up woman,” Han says.
Perhaps the humbling experience she faced back in 2018 has changed her. Certainly, the girl in the corridor opposite this writer has no airs and graces about her. She is just happy to be back.
“It’s like a restart for me,” she says. “Acting is something that I’ll probably be doing for my whole life. I’m going to stick at it.”
