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Fran Lu

Taiwan actress Ariel Lin Yi-chen has revealed how dieting ruined her health and how she is trying to lead a more relaxed life after decades of piling pressure on herself to succeed.
Her stellar career, and her constant drive for perfection, led her to become widely known by Mandarin speakers as the “Queen of Taiwan Dramas” and the goddess with zero negative comments.
But Lin says a life-threatening illness dramatically changed her outlook on life.
The 41-year-old is famous for her roles in hit Taiwan television dramas, It Started with a Kiss (2005), In Time with You (2011), and most recently, Imperfect Us (2024).

She has twice won the Golden Bell Award for Best Leading Actress, the Chinese-speaking world’s highest recognition for the television series category – for They Kiss Again (2007) and In Time with You.
Many remember her from It Started with a Kiss, adapted from the classic Japanese manga Mischievous Kiss, in which she played an ignorant and reckless secondary school student who chases after the school’s smartest boy.
In real life, Lin was a grade-A student who demanded perfection of herself.
She grew up with her little brother and her mother, who was a single parent.
Her mother had a stroke when Lin was in secondary school and left behind a pile of debts that she had to work to pay off.
To buy her brother a computer, Lin signed up for a beauty contest in 2000, and made her debut in the entertainment industry not long after she won it.

She said in a recent interview with Chinese magazine People that she inherited her perfectionism from her mother, a strong-minded, independent woman.
The actress says she would force herself to weep at “the perfect moment” when acting, and that she could not allow failure. She admitted she craved recognition for her abilities and talents.
Chinese actor Hu Ge, who co-starred with Lin in The Little Fairy (2006) and The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2008), said Lin told him she was “acting with her life”.
After frequently playing young students in a range of dramas, Lin said she wanted more challenging, diverse roles.
To achieve that goal, she felt she had to go on a drastic diet to lose her rounded cheeks and youthful puppy fat. So she forced herself to eat nothing but salads every day.
At one point she lost 4kg in a month.
The unhealthy diet deprived her body of essential nutrients which her doctors told her contributed to her developing a brain tumour which required surgery.
Lin used her illness as an opportunity to reflect on her lifestyle and her self-imposed demands.
“Nobody gave me the pressure. It was me who was cruel to myself,” she said.
Lin said “learning to be relaxed” would be her lesson for a lifetime.

“I was scared of hearing people saying ‘Yi-chen is a good woman’ or calling me ‘goddess with zero negative comment’. Such labels are scary,” Lin said.
In 2013, in an effort to slow down, she took a year off and studied acting at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London.
She took fewer jobs and only acted in films and television shows she deemed good quality, so she could spend more time with her family, including her two-year-old daughter.
“My daughter is always carefree, she dares to love and even shows her temper. I am learning from her how to ‘carpe diem’,” Lin said.


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Profile | ‘Perfectionist’ Taiwan actress Ariel Lin on how crash diets could have killed her

TV star tries to shake off cute, chubby schoolgirl image by losing weight, ends up with life-threatening illness