Not long ago, according to Hong Kong media reports, TVB veteran drama bone Li Jianren made his first appearance since the stroke.
In front of the camera, he is still a little slurred due to the sequelae, and can only travel in a wheelchair.
In 2019, Li Jianren, who was nearly 60 years old, suddenly suffered a stroke and was admitted to the hospital, and after craniotomy, he fell critically ill many times due to complications such as pneumonia.
For two years, he had thought about giving up treatment, thinking it was just a waste of time. But with the encouragement and companionship of his family, he finally broke this idea and began to actively cooperate.
Since his illness, Li Jianren has lost more than 70 pounds, and now his biggest wish is to continue filming.
Speaking of the name Li Jianren, many people may feel strange.
But when you see him playing a role, you will exclaim: it is him, I know!
That's right, he's the funny guy who was haunted by the Star Ye movie and was incredibly ugly— like a flower.
Shaved eyebrows, beard pulled, heavy makeup, hands digging nostrils...
As a royal supporting role of Stephen Chow, he has played Ruhua 60 times in more than 20 years, playing ugly and so deeply rooted in people's hearts that everyone has forgotten his real name.
But at that time, Li Jianren was obviously a sports macho man, not only more gold than Xingye Shuai, what made him willing to disfigure the performance? Still holding out for so long?
01 The years when I was at the same table with Stephen Chow
Lee was born in Hong Kong on 31 January 1961.
His father, Li Youtang, worked as a photographer at Jiahe Entertainment, but later switched to a restaurant and came from a relatively wealthy family.
Li Jianren has been on the set with his father since he was a child, so he has a strong interest in filming.
Later, he entered San Mario Middle School in junior high school, and became the same table with Zhou Xingchi in the second year of junior high school.
However, Li Jianren in his youth was much more dazzling than this tablemate.
At that time, he was very fond of sports, played football well, and grew tall, so he was naturally welcomed by many girls.
Unlike the crazy version of Zhou Xingchi that we see in film and television works, he had a cold face and was silent at that time.
But in Li Jianren's eyes, Zhou Xingchi is a genius and his idol.
Not only is his academic performance better than his own, but he also likes kung fu, and every day Zhou Xingchi has to stare at the small TV set, follow Bruce Lee inside to punch, and really practice a skill.
To this end, the students gave him a nickname called "Xiaolong", no matter what happened in the class, Zhou Xingchi would stand up and scare the other party away with a bright posture.
In the mid-1970s, Li Jianren began to follow his father on the set as a record and photography assistant, watching Jackie Chan and Hong Jinbao shoot action scenes in front of him every day, and his movie dreams in his heart could not be stopped.
After graduation, Li Jianren and Zhou Xingchi started a part-time career together.
At that time, they would still use the short lunch break every day to get together, eat, chat, and cheer each other up.
Until later, Zhou Xingchi met Liang Chaowei, who also did not like to talk.
As a result, the original "two-person world" was upgraded to a "threesome".
In 1981, Stephen Chow had a new goal, and he decided to apply for the Hong Kong TVB artist and become a film actor like his idol Bruce Lee in the future.
But Li Jianren's father thought it was too hard to do this and did not want his son to suffer this crime.
In contrast, his father preferred Li Jianren to become a footballer or work in the catering industry, so that he could take over the family restaurant in the future.
Under the strong opposition of his father, Li Jianren had to temporarily hide the film and television dreams buried in his heart for many years, and followed his father's will to study catering management abroad.
Before leaving, Li Jianren encouraged Zhou Xingchi to stick to his dream and apply for the TVB artist.
In this way, Zhou Xingchi pulled Liang Chaowei to register together, but he did not expect Liang Chaowei to succeed once, and Zhou Xingchi took the exam for two years before entering the night department of the training class.
After returning to China, Li Jianren began to enter the catering industry.
In the past 10 years, Li Jianren's life has changed a lot, from clerk to lounge waiter to managing 3 restaurants at the same time.
At that time, Li Jianren, with a monthly income of almost 50,000 yuan, not only had a successful career, but also formed a happy and happy family.
But the movie dream that has always been hidden in his heart has become his intention.
In this way, Li Jianren, who was not willing to miss it so much, did not hesitate to give up a stable job and found his old friend Zhou Xingchi.
02 Those years when I was fooled by Star-Lord
At this time, Zhou Xingchi's career has just started.
Although he has accumulated a wave of popularity with "Gestapo", he is still only a newcomer in the circle.
However, it was the golden age of Hong Kong cinema.
In movies such as "Gambler Saint", "Gambler", "Truant Weilong" and so on, Zhou Xingchi quickly became popular with his unique nonsense performance method.
In 1989, Zhou Xingchi introduced Li Jianren to work under Gao Zhisen, who made "Rich and Powerful".
At this point, the original catering boss officially unlocked the set to play miscellaneous notes.
Running dragon sets, field notes, camera assistants, assistant directors, producers... Do everything, make up for what is missing.
After 3 years of busyness, Zhou Xingchi's "flickering" plan began...
At that time, Zhou Xingchi was going to Beijing to shoot "Wu Zhuangyuan Su Qi'er", and he called Li Jianren and invited him to accompany him to travel and climb the Great Wall.
In this way, Li Jianren stepped on Zhou Xingchi's "thief ship".
On the set, Zhou Xingchi "colluded" with the makeup artist, under the guise of asking him to help, and turned him into this without paying attention.
Shaved eyebrows, stubble, nostrils, smiling...
Later, recalling the scene at that time, Li Jianren said that he had never seen himself so ugly, so angry that he cried in the hotel for two hours, and even wanted to fight with Zhou Xingchi.
Apparently, for this kind of disfigurement performance, Li Jianren initially refused.
Can not resist Zhou Xingchi soft grinding hard bubbles, treat guests, send red envelopes, what tricks are used.
Therefore, Li Jianren played "the sister of Su Qi'er's aunt" with a hard scalp.
I never thought that this kind of thing was only 0 times and countless times, and then Li Jianren never returned on the road of "playing ugly".
In 1993, Zhou Xingchi found Li Jianren again and said that there was a role in "Tang Bohu Dian Qiu Xiang" that suited him very well.
As soon as it turned out, it was women's clothing again...
This time, he played the legendary Yellow Flower Girl, or a shadow killer.
It is said that the moment he looked back, even Zhou Xingchi was frightened.
In 1994, Li Jianren continued to dress as a woman in "Domestic Lingling Paint", playing the female boss of the Regent Grand Hotel.
However, Li Jianren, who has played the best beauty three times, still has no name in the play.
Until 1994, director Wang Jing found him to star in "Nine Pin Sesame Officer".
This is a major turning point for Li Jianren.
Because in this play, Wang Jing gave his character a name, that is, Ruhua.
Li Jianren recalled that when he was the assistant director of the play, his body trembled a little when he saw the name in the script. He had a feeling that the name would give him a little bit of popularity, just like "Little Brother" and "Big Fool".
Sure enough, since then, "like a flower" has become An exclusive term for Li Jianren.
As long as you have seen Stephen Chow's movie, you may not know who Li Jianren is, but you must remember the woman who is exaggerated, loves to pick her nose, and is ugly to the extreme.
In the next 20 years, Li Jianren repeatedly performed "Like a Flower" more than 60 times.
In "The Great Inner Secret Agent Zero Zero Hair", while digging her nostrils, she ran downstairs to the harem beauty.
Wang Xiaohu with a clear eyebrow in "Hundred Variable Star Jun";
In "Night of the Returning Soul", the big beauty who surprised the four sides as soon as she appeared;
The young schoolgirl in uniform and with a double ponytail in God Eater;
The little pill in "A Dragon of Fortune";
The lady of the barber shop in "Shaolin Soccer";
……
I have to say that Li Jianren in Stephen Chow's movie really played the "ugly" to the extreme.
Every time it appears unexpectedly, it can instantly trigger laughter, and even become an indispensable Easter egg in the audience's heart.
But in reality, he obviously has a height of 183 and looks handsome, why is he willing to play a clown for so many years? In retrospect years later, did he really not regret it?
In one show, the host asked Lee Ken-jin if he was given another chance to re-choose, would he still play such a role?
Li Jianren will not hesitate to bring: Yes.
He joked that Stephen Chow was not as handsome as himself when he was studying, so he deliberately made himself ugly in the movie, which was his jealousy of himself.
In this regard, he was also dissatisfied, disgusted, rejected, and even angry that he wanted to do something with Zhou Xingchi.
However, looking back again many years later, my heart is more grateful.
If there is no Zhou Xingchi's original flickering, there will be no later self, and the audience will not see the role of "like a flower".
As Li Jianren said, the profession of actor is actually very passive, and the results of many things are not within the control of the actor himself.
Not only do you have to bear the pressure yourself, but your family also has to take risks with you. "Children are ridiculed by my classmates because I play a woman, and I really want to appear in front of everyone as a boy."
But since we have chosen this path, we must persevere to the end.
Therefore, even if it is a small supporting role that only appears on the screen for tens of seconds, it is necessary to constantly practice, run in, and shoot, and if you want to do a good job, you must pay ten times or twenty times more effort than others.
For example, once Li Jianren dressed as a woman and wanted to wear earrings, the director did not shout to stop, he did not dare to take it.
At the end of the day, her ears were red and swollen, and the pain was so painful that she understood how difficult it was to be a woman.
For example, in "Journey to the West", Li Jianren holds several positions and sleeps only two hours a day.
In addition to staring at the actors as an assistant director, he also made a cameo appearance as the Bull Devil King, and it took 3 hours just to wear makeup.
By the way, Wu Mengda, who had a temporary affair, played the Eight Precepts of the Pig for a few days.
Surprisingly, "Journey to the West" did not create another peak for them, but failed at the box office.
The cooperation between Li Jianren and Zhou Xingchi has also begun to enter the countdown.
03 The years when he left Stephen Chow
In 1999, Wang Jing asked Zhou Xingchi to participate in "King of a Thousand Kings 2000" at a sky-high price.
Due to Zhou Xingchi's dissatisfaction with the script, the two have since stopped cooperating.
And this also became the last cooperation between Li Jianren and Zhou Xingchi.
After 2000, Stephen Chow never worked with his old partners again.
Wu Mengda and Li Jianren have become the past tense in his films.
When asked why he stopped making Stephen Chow's films, Li Jianren did not give a clear answer: we are old classmates, I can understand him, I know his temper very well, so there is no big contradiction between us.
Therefore, what exactly happened between the two is still an unsolved mystery.
Later, Like many Hong Kong actors, Lee Kin Yan embarked on a journey north.
He continued to play "Ru Hua" in various network universities and web dramas.
But without Zhou Xingchi's "like a flower", it became no longer funny.
Audiences no longer pay for this overly pompous, cookie-cutter image, and Li Jianren's career has never ushered in a turnaround.
Despite this, Lee has not complained or regretted it, because the role is only a part of life for the actor.
"I have to shoot two sets of scenes a month, plus advertising or something, and it's enough to live." Being content and happy is a must, so be happy every day. ”
In addition to acting like a flower for more than 20 years, Li Jianren also has a loving wife, and his three children have grown up.
For his career, he is grateful to his old friends who brought him into the industry and helped him.
For life, he chose to be content and happy: "I am happier than Zhou Xingchi because I have a family. ”
In 2019, after a sudden stroke, he also fell into financial difficulties.
Fortunately, Gambi and Gu Tianle, the wives of wealthy merchants Liu Luanxiong, helped him get through the difficulties.
Recently, he made his first appearance in public after falling ill, and although he has lost a lot less weight than before, it can be seen that he really has efforts to recover.
Li Jianren wrote on Weibo: "I will work hard to recover and return to the front of the curtain as soon as possible." ”
It can be seen that although he has entered his sixties, he has long passed the age of fighting for career and ambition, but his enthusiasm for acting has never faded.
The golden age of Hong Kong cinema is a thing of the past, and the peak of "like a flower" is gone.
But what is irreplaceable is that those who have been in the ordinary years have really brought us laughter and memories.