Entertainment> Celebrities

A million yuan smile

By Liu Wei (China Daily)
2009-07-30 09:52

Wang joined them and got his first role after two weeks. The daily pay was about 50 yuan. He had to work on construction sites while waiting for the chance to act further.

He lived with five other people in a rented, weather-beaten house without a bathroom. Rent was 120 yuan a month.

"Many people told me, you neither learned to act at school, nor are you good-looking. You should thank God if you end up as a double in action films," Wang recalls. "But the more strongly others discouraged me the more motivated I became."

The most difficult thing for Wang at that time, he says, was not the hard life, but missing his mother.

"During those most difficult days I found no one in the world cherished me more than my mother. I wanted badly to share my joys and hardships with her."

But from 2000 to 2002, he tried hard not to call his mother because he had not succeeded and felt ashamed.

"Life then was so far away from what I dreamed of," he says. "Things get smooth when you cross the turning point, but I never knew when that would happen."

His turning point came in 2002 after he received a call from independent filmmaker Li Yang's crew. Li's first film, Blind Shaft, needed an actor for the leading role, a naive village boy.

Li preferred amateurs, thinking they would be able to play the character better. Wang's humility, freckles and innocent smile won him the role.

Wang cherished the opportunity. Other actors withdrew when a scene had to be shot in a mineshaft hundreds of meters deep, but Wang went down.

Li was moved: "He was from the most ordinary class. He knows life is hard so he cherishes every chance."

Many of his co-strugglers outside the studio thought he was just lucky, but Wang knows luck is not everything.

He took a dictionary with him all the time, because he wasn't traditionally schooled at the temple. He wrote pinyin beside words he did not know and recited all the lines before the shooting started.

Blind Shaft earned him 1,000 yuan ($146), and a Best New Performer award at the Golden Horse Awards, known as Taiwan's academy awards. Most importantly, he received an invitation to work with famous director Feng Xiaogang.

Feng's films were frequently box office champions in China. Starring in his film meant exposure to tens of millions of viewers.

Wang drank three cups of wine when he first met Feng. "Drinking up" traditionally is a way of showing respect, but Wang was also drinking because he was nervous.