In 2001, the first TV series on domestic violence in mainland China, "Don't Talk to Strangers", swept the country.
In the play, Feng Yuanzheng, the actor of An Jiahe, changed the image of gentleness and elegance in the past.
With the ultimate performance, he has become a paranoid, perverted, and highly controlling domestic violence maniac.
The close to the realistic plot and the non-contradictory acting have made the audience enter the drama quite deeply, so that they have left a deep sequelae of the "Fear of Feng Expedition".
When domestic violence is mentioned, the mind unconsciously reveals the crazy demon of the vicious-looking wife abuse.
However, with the passage of time, the actor who was synonymous with domestic violence at that time proved himself to be a gentle and elegant person, not only did not beat his wife in life, but the two also loved each other for more than twenty years.
Audiences who know the truth have felt that this kind of acting is outrageous, and the whole country cannot find a second person.
So how did Feng Yuanzheng's outrageous acting skills come about?
This has to be traced back to the legendary journey to Germany in his youth and the mysterious mentor who made him superb, Ruth Mersin.
Gifted amateur performer
A native of Beijing, Feng Yuanzheng was born in 1962 to a military family of four older siblings.
Since he was a child, he liked to make some novel things, and although he looked polite and polite, he was not very peaceful in his heart.
When I was a child, I dreamed of becoming a skydiver, so I signed up for a related training course.
In order to participate in the skydiving selection competition, he also gave up participating in the college entrance examination, and the result was of course unsatisfactory, so he found nothing, and could only go to the zipper factory as a temporary worker.
But this did not let him idle, in the factory can not be separated, and a few friends often play performance games, after the performance is better than who acted.
Gradually, he discovered that he had a talent for acting, so he signed up for an acting training class in his spare time.
It just so happened that there was a teacher Song Shizhen from the Central Academy of Drama in the class.
In addition to bringing him professional performance knowledge, Teacher Song also assigned him the direction of life.
Say to him: "Your acting talent is very good, you can go professionally".
Teacher Song's advice strengthened his confidence.
So he quit his job and stayed at home to concentrate on acting.
When you have time, you will go to the extras, run the dragon set, and see how the professional people perform.
In 1984, in order to officially go to the road of acting, he applied for the acting department of the Beijing Film Academy.
However, it was rejected because of image problems.
But in the examination room, he met his first Bole , director Zhang Nunxin.
It was in the examination room that Director Zhang took a fancy to this young man with a polite and cold personality, and invited him to audition for the "Youth Festival" crew that year.
At that time, Feng Yuanzheng had no professional acting training and no acting experience, and did not perform well in front of many competitors.
However, Zhang Nunxin still struggled to dispel dissent and decided to play Ren Jia by him.
Since then, Feng Yuanzheng has officially embarked on the road of acting.
In 1985, he took the exam at the People's Art Theater in Beijing and successfully entered the study, becoming a drama actor, and met a second nobleman the following year.
Professor Mersin from Germany.
The arrival of the noble Mersin
Professor Ruth Mersin was a distinguished teacher of Beijing Renyi at that time and the inheritor of Grotowski's performance system.
The performance theory of this school is one of the most far-reaching theories in the field of theater in the world today.
Professor Mersin worked at the Higher Academy of Arts in West Berlin, and in 1985, the famous director Lin Zhaohua visited Germany and was interested in the acting training of Ruth Mersin's students.
Immediately after the visit, he suggested to the Beijing Renyi leaders to hire this professor to teach performance knowledge in China.
Ruth Mersin gladly agreed and came to China by train for eight days and eight nights.
The teaching time in China was only one month, but it opened a new door for Chinese theater performance.
In particular, Professor Mersin has another important takeaway.
That was the Chinese student who discovered her, Feng Yuanzheng
In just one month of teaching, Professor Mersin twice invited Feng Expedition to study in Germany.
She kindly said to Feng Yuanzheng, if you apply for the Higher Academy of Arts in West Berlin, I will be the first to admit you.
However, Feng Yuanzheng lacked the recognition and yearning for foreign countries at that time.
Coupled with his own efforts and talents, he gradually gained a foothold in the art of ren, and he did not want to give up the life in front of him.
Although Ruth Mersin regretted it, she did not give up when she was thirsty for talent.
Soon after, she visited Beijing again for exchanges, and this time she approached Feng Yuanzheng and invited him to Germany to be her student, but was still rejected.
In 1987, Ruth Mersin came to China for the third time, and this time Feng Expedition took her to play in Beijing for more than twenty days.
The teacher invited him to study in Germany without a doubt,
However, at this time, Feng Yuanzheng had already become the protagonist of renyi and had his own career.
He also has a girlfriend, and he is not willing to give up the happy life in front of him, so he politely refuses again.
Ruth Mersin learned about his love life and told him that if you could come, she could help you with your wedding in Germany, and then turned away.
At that time, this condition somewhat made Feng Yuanzheng feel a little moved. But he still did not answer immediately.
German mom in art
The twist came in 1989, when Feng Yuanzheng was 27 years old and his relationship broke down.
Frustrated, he felt like he had lost everything.
He wanted to leave the troupe, and even wanted to leave China.
So he thought of the professor Mersin who had invited him to study abroad.
With trepidation, he dialed the professor's phone and told Professor Mersin of his thoughts, but he heard a surprised laugh on the phone.
Professor Mersin still remembers him and welcomes him very much.
In this way, Feng Yuanzheng decided to cut off all ties with the past.
Packing all the necessary luggage, and bringing half a box of books, like the teacher, took the train for eight days and eight nights, and came to a new world.
The new environment, the new things made him forget everything, and he confessed that he wanted to stay there forever and did not want to return to China.
Ruth Mersin's love for Von Expedition has gone far beyond the ordinary teacher-student relationship.
She showed a strong passion for this young man with an exotic cultural background and awe-inspiring talents.
Loving and eager, she was worried that Feng Yuanzheng, who had come from afar, would encounter life problems in Germany, and she did not want her lover to work in a difficult place to make ends meet.
He was placed in his own home, and he was given a pocket money of eight hundred marks a month, so that he could live and study in Germany with peace of mind and concentrate on the study of art.
The biggest difficulty in studying and living in Germany was the language problem, at that time he could not speak a word of German, and learning to perform could only be physical communication.
So Professor Mersin, the first thing he paid attention to was his language problem.
While eating, Mersin walked up to him and suddenly said to him,
"What is the place I took you to see on the first day?"
The Berlin Wall.
"How to say the wall in German,"
mauer.
Repeat ten times
So Feng Yuanzheng obediently repeated it ten times, and after she finished, she said, "Good, eat."
In this way, Feng Yuanzheng ate and lived in Mersin's house for a year, all of which was tasteless.
There is another reason why Mersin cares so much for his foreign student.
One day, Professor Mersin said to Feng Yuanzheng, "You are very much like my son."
I can pass on all my stuff to you.
Although Feng Yuanzheng had lived here for a while and had long been treated as a relative to the teacher who cared for him meticulously, he was still surprised when the teacher said such a thing.
He was happy to accept that the teacher regarded himself as a son, and he was willing to call her mother.
To be able to find such a loved one in a foreign country is like finding a warm harbor for the wandering soul.
Since then, he has had an artistic mother in Germany.
In addition to being moved, Feng Yuanzheng is grateful, and the best way to be grateful is to study hard and live up to the expectations of the teacher.
Tough choices
Mersin treated himself better than his own son, which made Feng Yuanzheng very moved, but also a little too careless.
So he dug up a small theater in the teacher's house, and the teacher specialized in performing in this small theater.
Under the teacher's dedicated teaching, he improved rapidly.
Not only in terms of acting, but also in mentality.
Professor Mersin's teaching philosophy and method of Grotowski's performance system are completely different from Chinese teaching.
She's not teaching acting, she's tapping into the potential of inspiring acting.
They believe that each of us, as long as we are normal people, is a natural performer.
From a young age, we know how to disguise ourselves with adults, how to win sympathy by pretending to be sick and pretending to be weak.
The key is to get rid of some of the external tricks and gorgeous decorations,
To recognize yourself, to find yourself, in a state of natural man, to replace the role of the character,
At this time, you are not acting, but you are the person.
First recognize yourself, then recognize the world, go with the flow, and integrate into it, this is the concept that Professor Mersin taught him.
So when Feng Yuanzheng first came to Germany, he saw the performers here, although they were several years younger than themselves, and their performance experience was not rich.
But they are very natural, very imaginative.
This is exactly what is lacking in Chinese education, and it is completely different from the various performance skills he has received in the past.
This benefited him a lot and at the same time came up with the idea of passing this advanced performance training system back to China, blossoming in China and contributing to China's performing arts career.
So he told his teacher what he thought.
The teacher did not expect him to go back, and had long been accustomed to his presence. Objected to his idea.
Feng Yuanzheng, who had been studying in Germany for two years at the time, was enough to find a stage for performance in Germany, and enough to gain a foothold.
But the living environment in a foreign country, coupled with racial exclusion, ultimately makes it difficult for him to find a sense of belonging here.
He's going to go in the end.
At that time, he was already able to stand on his own, so he moved out of the teacher's home Feng Yuanzheng. I have found the teacher many times to communicate, but the teacher has been unable to accept it.
The teacher's deep feelings made it difficult for him to choose, and how many times he walked at the teacher's door and refused to leave.
He was very troubled and sad, and he knew that his decision would make the teacher who had already regarded himself as his son very sad.
But he also knew that he did not belong here. His talent, his philosophy are all driving him all the time, to go to a bigger stage, to do a bigger cause.
In Germany, because of the problem of appearance and skin color, he was difficult to develop, and Ruth Mersin used his lifelong knowledge to shape his sacred acting skills and arouse his artistic ideals.
But it was contradictory to let him stay here forever, and she knew in her heart that he could not be retained.
The last time, when Feng Yuanzheng stepped on the teacher's door here, the teacher sat there and did not talk much.
Quietly listening to the disciple said: "I will leave tomorrow, I will return to China, the ticket has been booked."
She didn't look him in the eye, but with her head bowed
Very calmly said, "Oh."
"Then you decide, just go back."
"And then..."
"When you have time you can come back"
"Tomorrow I have something to do, I won't send you."
"I'm having something to do now, I'm going out"
Feng Yuanzheng knew that the teacher's heart was still difficult to accept, and she did not dare to face herself, did not dare to accept this fact.
Farewell to the teacher, farewell to the small theater with the teacher day and night,
Finally, I stopped in front of the door for a long time and finally embarked on the road back to China.
A wonderful rendition of "Anjiahe"
After returning to China, Feng Yuanzheng had lost all the resources in human art, and he could not act, and began to start from scratch.
The bench is ten years cold, starting with running dragon sets, and later becoming a "professional supporting actor".
Since returning to China in 1991, although he has also acted in many plays, he has not been tepid.
His acting skills and his philosophy have not yet been fully unleashed.
It wasn't until 2001 that "Don't Talk to Strangers" came out.
This is the first film and television drama on the mainland to reflect domestic violence, and once it was broadcast, it became popular all over the country, and the male protagonist of the play, An Jiahe, was Feng Yuanzheng.
It is said that when the director took the role script to find a lot of well-known powerful actors at that time, but they all refused because they were worried about affecting the image or difficult to control.
When Feng Yuanzheng saw it, he decided to seize this opportunity.
In order to shoot this scene well, Feng Yuanzheng specially called the women's hotline to ask whether the intellectuals would beat his wife, and the answer he got was also to refresh his cognition.
What he has learned over the years can be said to be perfect in this drama, and he is more gentle and kind, with superb acting skills and advanced acting concepts, he is fully substituted for the role in the play.
The god-like acting performance vividly portrays Anjiahe's dark distortion and violence.
It left a terrifying shadow on many male and female audiences, including actress Mei Ting.
His friends and colleagues over the years have questioned him again and again.
At that time, he had been married to Liang Danny, who was also an actor, for eight years, and his wife suddenly became the object of sympathy of the national audience, including the friends around him.
Even his mother-in-law once doubted whether he really beat his wife in life.
Call several times to confirm repeatedly.
After the drama was broadcast, it was boycotted by the people of the whole country, and many people formed a group against domestic violence and squatted everywhere to point out Feng Expedition, which was simply to export evil spirits.
For a long time after the TV series was broadcast, Feng Yuanzheng was afraid and frightened, did not dare to go out, did not dare to go out on the street alone.
To this day, whenever the news of domestic violence is involved, the picture will always have the image of the cold Anjiahe.
No way, it's too classic.
All this is because he is too good at acting and "blames himself".
Say goodbye to your mentor forever
For his acting achievements, he never forgot his mentor, and to this day he still abides by the teacher's teachings to him.
That study abroad experience has always supported his continuous development and breakthrough in his career.
Natural substitution performance has become his obvious personal characteristics, allowing him to play no matter what role he plays, and the performance is reasonable.
In 2012, Ruth Mersin became seriously ill and both legs were incapacitated.
Feng Yuanzheng took his wife and rushed to Germany to visit his German mother.
He said to his mother, follow me back to China, I will find the best Chinese medicine doctor to treat you,
Mersin thought about it and refused, saying that I couldn't move, couldn't fly.
Because of his serious illness, Mersin's nails have not been trimmed for a long time,
Feng Yuanzheng gently picked up his mother's hand, and while talking to him kindly, he trimmed his nails, just like she cared for herself, caring for this teacher.
When he wanted to leave, Feng Yuanzheng did not trust Messing's mother, so he dragged his friends in Germany and called his mother every week, until 2014, when the phone was never answered.
"I thank Mersin, without her, without Grovsky, I would not be where I am today.".
This is a sentence that Feng Yuanzheng repeats every time he talks about his German mother,
The professor not only taught him to act, but also changed his values and outlook on life.
He becomes "picky" and will not succumb to the flow of money, and the pursuit of art and the discovery of self are all obsessions in his heart.
When Feng Yuanzheng and his wife said goodbye to Professor Mersin again in 2012, he didn't know if it would be the last goodbye.
He could only hug the German mother for a long time and say, "Mom, I love you."