Xi Meijuan, mention this name, many people may have a question mark in their minds, who is this?
But if you see her picture, it will make people suddenly realize, oh, it is her.
It will feel very familiar, and even be able to count the roles she has played.
Especially in the TV series "An Jia" broadcast last year, the gentle and elegant Grandma Jiang is even more impressive.
Xi Meijuan, who is 66 years old this year, is still active on the screen, and she is an evergreen tree in the film and television circle.
She has played many roles as mothers and has been called "mother professional household" by the audience.
The same mother role, Xi Meijuan played each one differently.
She once said that she had her own understanding of the characters she played.
Behind this is her decades of meticulousness, dedication, and concentration.
In life, Xi Meijuan is also a mother, but for her son, she has been single for 27 years and has not considered marriage.
01
Xi Meijuan was born in Shanghai in 1955 to a working-class family, the father of a factory designer who specialized in designing toys.
After work, my father likes to read a lot, and my father's good habit has also influenced Xi Meijuan.
Before she went to school, she could already recognize simple words.
After going to school, Xi Meijuan learned faster and recognized more words than her classmates around her.
This made her more interested in reading.
Later, younger siblings were born, and Xi Meijuan was still the most favorite of the sisters to read.
She has a quiet personality, not noisy or noisy.
When Xi Meijuan was in elementary school, in a special era, that movement began.
When Xi Meijuan graduated from high school, she was assigned to Yangsi Commune and went to the countryside to become a farmer, and she was still the young woman who loved literature.
Xi Meijuan followed her classmates to work in the fields every day, came back from work, and whenever she had time, she held a book and read it.
After more than a month of such a life, the Shanghai Theater Academy came to enroll.
At this time, Xi Meijuan had never seen a drama, and she didn't even know what the drama was.
However, someone informed that when she went to the interview, Xi Meijuan sat down in front of the examiner with her classmates without understanding.
The interview was conducted for four rounds, and in the end, Xi Meijuan and several classmates were selected to become students of the Shanghai Theater Academy.
Founded in 1945, enrollment was interrupted for several years during the movement, and it was not resumed until 1973.
Xi Meijuan became the first batch of students after the resumption of enrollment.
Later, when she mentioned this experience, Xi Meijuan said that she did not know what this interview meant to her at that time.
It's just that when she was told to go to the interview, she, like other students, was a little curious, and when she performed, she let her do whatever she wanted, just like doing farm work every day, thinking that she was completing the tasks assigned by the leader.
After entering the school, Xi Meijuan studied very hard. At the same time of training, she did not leave the books, still studying and learning, and experienced the delicate heart of the characters.
After studying at the Shanghai Theater Academy for four years and graduating, Xi Meijuan was assigned to the Shanghai People's Art Theatre.
This is 1977, Xi Meijuan is 22 years old.
Graduated with Xi Meijuan, a good-looking classmate (such as Pan Hong) has begun to act in film and television dramas, and Xi Meijuan is considered "less photogenic" and is assigned to act in dramas.
If it comes, it will be safe.
Here, Xi Meijuan met a good teacher and a good leader.
That is Huang Zuolin, president of the Shanghai People's Art Theatre.
In the past few years in the art theater, Xi Meijuan is not yet 29 years old, and has been arranged to play three generations of old, middle-aged and young women, which has also laid a solid foundation for her future performances.
In 1988, the state held the first China Arts Festival, Xi Meijuan's People's Art Theater, participated in the play "Chinese Dream".
This is a play written by dean Huang Zuolin himself, and the task of performance falls to Xi Meijuan.
There are eight major dramas in this drama, and Xi Meijuan is the heroine.
She also lived up to expectations and completed the performance brilliantly. In the end, he won the plum blossom award, the highest award for drama performance.
After 15 years of deep cultivation in the drama industry, Xi Meijuan finally had the opportunity to start participating in film and television dramas like her former classmates.
02.
When the Plum Blossom Award arrived, Xi Meijuan, who was once considered to have an unpredicted face shape, received an olive branch from all sides.
However, she did not rush to participate in the performance, but chose the script she thought was better, "Fake Girl True Feelings".
The film was released in 1990, and after filming this film, Xi Meijuan was already involved in the filming of the next play "Jiang Zhuying".
Until she received a call from the old dean Huang Zuolin, on the phone, the old dean excitedly congratulated Xi Meijuan, and she won the Golden Rooster Award for Best Actress.
In that year, the Golden Rooster Award was mainly won on the news network to solemnly broadcast the list, which is also an important embodiment of the state's restoration of literature and art after the movement and the importance attached to literature and art.
Xi Meijuan did not expect to win the award, and also missed the news broadcast.
The first time I tried the big screen, I achieved such a high level of achievement, which is a great motivation for Xi Meijuan, but also accompanied by pressure.
This made Xi Meijuan take each of her next roles more seriously.
She once said that playing a role, no matter the protagonist and supporting roles, no matter how much or how little the scene, are taken seriously.
In each play, she has her own understanding of the role.
"Observe the characters, feel the details, and the characters who are performed in this way have flesh and blood and temperature."
When participating in the movie "Jiang Zhuying", Xi Meijuan played Lu Changqin, the wife of optical expert Jiang Zhuying.
In order to play this role well, Xi Meijuan proposed to the crew that she must meet the prototype of this role, even if she only sees one side, so that she can feel the heart of the character more truly.
In this kind of biographical movie, the character of the wife is originally a green leaf type role, but Xi Meijuan does not think so at all, she wants to play the green leaf, has its own characteristics, has the style of the prototype.
Sure enough, after the release of the film, Xi Meijuan won the Best Supporting Actress Award at the Huabiao Awards that year with her accurate and delicate performance.
She also won the Golden Phoenix Award of the Society for Performing Arts, the Best Actress Award of the Film and Television Department, and the Best Actress Award of the 1st University Television Festival.
The film has achieved such good results, inseparable from the actor's careful performance.
In an interview, Xi Meijuan talked about her feelings when she saw the character archetype, saying that she visited Jiang Zhuying's wife before filming began.
She saw a wife, remembering her husband's affection, and the silent pause in the narrative, all of which touched her greatly.
This is also where her performance success lies.
03.
Personally experiencing the role and feeling the real life of the character, this good habit, Xi Meijuan has maintained for many years.
When filming the TV series "Red Prescription" and "Dark War", she worked hard to learn about drugs and went to very dangerous places to experience life;
When filming "Red Carnation", Xi Meijuan played the villain for the first time, the boss of a large group company, and the hidden big BOSS.
Before filming began, Xi Meijuan once again truly experienced life.
She followed the prosecutor to interrogate the corrupt official, and in the narrow room, she watched the inconspicuous but meaningful dialogue between the two sides, and felt the complicated mood of sitting opposite the prosecutor;
When filming the movie "Yang Shanzhou", Xi Meijuan played Yang Shanzhou's wife, she saw that Yang Shanzhou's wife had kept the watch left by her husband for many years, and that kind of affection made her very moved;
During the filming of "Hawthorn Tree Love", Xi Meijuan played the mother of the heroine Jing Qiu, a female worker with an envelope.
Before the shooting began, Xi Meijuan went to a factory in Jiangxi, followed the workers to learn to paste envelopes, learned for more than half a month, and learned that one hand was swollen...
Sharpen the knife without mistakenly chopping wood.
For good actors, these preparations before filming, these real experiences, are a little redundant, so that the actors can capture all aspects of the real people very accurately.
With her outstanding performance in the TV series "Red Carnation", Xi Meijuan won the Feitian Award for Best Actress; the TV series "Zazhuang" won Xi Meijuan the Most Popular Actress Award at the Golden Eagle Award that year.
In her decades of experience in the industry, Xi Meijuan has played the role of mother many times.
But Xi Meijuan said that her mother and mother are also different, she does not want to stay in the past, does not want to repeat herself.
For each character, she has her own understanding, and every time she plays, she strives to make the characters have their own characteristics, a little bit different, so that people can remember.
In "That Year the Flowers Bloomed and the Moon Was Round", Xi Meijuan once again played Cixi, which is the fifth time she has played this role.
In this drama, Xi Meijuan only made a cameo appearance for two days, with only 10 scenes.
However, she played the loneliness that Cixi felt when she was powerless to return to the sky in the face of the building, which was unforgettable.
In addition to the role of mother, Xi Meijuan said that she most wanted to play some ordinary women, female doctors, female judges, female policemen, female scientists...
"Against the background of such a big era, it is a dereliction of duty for us literary and art workers not to express the joys and sorrows of the people and the real life of the people."
Nowadays, people often say "do not forget the original heart", but what is the original heart, many people just shout slogans, in fact, they use performance as a tool to make quick money, and do not really regard performance as a career.
And Xi Meijuan, the love of acting, has been the same for many years.
She didn't use the job to make quick money, she said, she can't guarantee that every work she has participated in is the best, but the role she plays, she must be ashamed.
In the industry for 31 years, Xi Meijuan has maintained the speed of one or two works per year and has become an evergreen tree in the show business circle.
In terms of emotional life, since the divorce 27 years ago, Xi Meijuan has lived alone with her son, and has never talked about marriage again.
04.
Xi Meijuan's ex-husband is the actor Zhou Yemang.
He has played the most famous role, which is Lin Chong in the CCTV 96 version of "Water Margin".
This is also a character that makes the audience very favorite, and he portrays Lin Chong's helpless and somewhat cowardly image into three points.
So far, many netizens still affectionately call her "Sister Lin".
Roles are roles, and life is life.
The same thing is that Zhou Yemang in life, the responsibility for his wife and children, to describe it as cowardly, is too light.
At that time, Xi Meijuan and Zhou Yemang were in the same Shanghai People's Art Theater, similar in age and similar in hobbies, and they fell in love and married not long after they met.
This year, Xi Meijuan was 30 years old and pregnant.
However, at that time, the two people had no life experience, neglected to protect the fetus, and soon the child miscarried.
This incident hit the couple hard.
Although Xi Meijuan had just entered the industry and participated in two movies, she had achieved very good results, but in order to get pregnant for the second time, she gave up her job and concentrated on giving birth.
At the age of 39, Xi Meijuan became pregnant again.
The couple was overjoyed at the same time, but also extra careful, after all, this age, for women, is not young, not to mention the previous miscarriage, more careful.
Who knows that this joy of welcoming a new life did not last long, and the relationship between husband and wife came to an end.
Less than a month after the birth of her son, Xi Meijuan was still confinement, and every day she had to face the busyness of having a newborn, but Zhou Yemang proposed divorce at this time, and her attitude was resolute, and she must leave.
Whether Xi Meijuan is focused on the child and ignores her husband's feelings, or whether the feelings of the two people have been exhausted in several years of life, the specific reason is unknown.
In short, Xi Meijuan did not force it, did not retain it, and calmly went through the divorce procedures.
From 1994 to 1997, Xi Meijuan gave up her just started career and began the life of a single mother.
Emotional hurt, hardship of life, I don't know how Xi Meijuan spent those years of bleak time.
In so many years of interviews, I have never seen her mention it.
Xi Meijuan once said, "You can't live with a person who has no feelings, even though he may not be a bad person." ”
In the face of the breakdown of the marriage, Xi Meijuan did not plead, did not settle, nor did she complain about herself, but calmly accepted all this.
Then, be strong and bring up your child.
It wasn't until 1998, when her son was four years old, that Xi Meijuan began to return to the screen.
Fortunately, the time is not too long, the afterglow of several awards is still there, and the excellent performance of the past is also a guarantee that the filmmaker believes in her acting skills.
Xi Meijuan took over the TV series "Red Prescription" adapted from the novel by female writer Bi Shumin, which is the story of a mother who redeems her daughter who has embarked on an evil road.
Xi Meijuan starred as female number one, playing the mother, and Zhou Xun played the daughter.
As a mother and personally taking children for several years, Xi Meijuan has a deeper understanding of the identity of a mother.
Sure enough, after the drama was broadcast, the word of mouth was very good.
Xi Meijuan used this role to prove that her business ability was not wasted.
This time, back in the public eye, Xi Meijuan did not stop again.
Until this year, she was 66 years old, cooperated with Zhou Xun again, played mother and daughter again, and filmed "Tu Youyou's Gift".
In an interview, Xi Meijuan said that when she graduated from the theater, she played a female military doctor, saw herself in the mirror, with short hair in her ears and walking posture very different from her usual self.
Xi Meijuan said that at that moment, she experienced the magic of the performance.
It is also this original intention that has always inspired Xi Meijuan.
Now Xi Meijuan, her career is stable, her son is also 27 years old, and everything is bitter.
The years did not leave the mark of suffering on her face, and some, just quiet, calm, and, at any time, seeing her calm face, made people feel gentle and powerful.