Gao Ying
"Spring has arrived, a hundred flowers are blooming, and the begonia flowers in the West Flower Hall are blooming again..."
Holding begonia flowers in his hand and a spotted silk scarf around his neck, Gao Ying recited the lines of "Begonia Flower Language" with emotion, and the audience kept wiping their tears with their sleeves.
Standing on the stage performing the recitation was Xue Fei, who was dressed in a Zhongshan suit and had a dignified face.
There were only two people on the stage, but their eyes did not cross in the slightest, and with the climax of the recitation, the two seemed to be in dialogue, but also like talking to people in the distance.
Finally, accompanied by Gao Ying's sentence: "The person who looks at the flowers, where have you gone?" revealed the mystery of the two people choosing to perform in this way.
Gao Ying and Xue Fei recite "Begonia Flower Language"
It turned out that Sister Deng, played by Gao Ying, was looking at Premier Zhou Enlai, played by Xue Fei, who had passed away, and the audience was also shocked by this deep meaning in addition to their sudden realization.
The event, titled "Zhou Enlai, the Proud Son of the Canal - Recitation of Famous Chinese Classics", was completed in Europe by Gao Ying, 63, in 2018, together with seven Chinese recitation and performance artists.
The world audience heard the extraordinary "small" stories of Premier Zhou's life, and also jointly remembered this good prime minister who Chinese people.
Unexpectedly, as soon as the report came out, everyone was talking about Gao Ying's appearance now:
"Oh my God, a completely changed person."
Group photo of the actors of "Zhou Enlai, the Proud Son of the Canal - Recitation of Chinese Classic Famous Artists"
The Gao Ying in the photo has the elegance and appearance of her age, but she is also obviously old, and compared with the photos of her youth, it is indeed very different.
Years ago, she had a dark shawl hair, bright and intelligent eyes, and a well-defined plump and ruddy face.
With the role of Fang Fang and Yuanyuan in "The Two Of Them and Them", Gao Ying became an idol of the generation in the 80s.
Audiences from afar in the xing'an mountains of northern Xinjiang, the vast Xisha Islands in the southern country, and Xinjiang in the western part of Mang mang have written to her to express their affection.
Nowadays, the stars who were extremely popular at the beginning, the youth of a generation, the recent photos and the judgment of the year are like two people, which cannot help but surprise people.
Stills from "The Two Of Them and Them"
But this "surprise", but also itself is also "surprised", modern people seem to have become accustomed to the "youth forever" of female stars.
In the end, what kind of state is "normal" for a good actress to spend her time at her peak and reappear in the public eye.
Is it to let us witness "the years never defeat the beauty", the 40-year-old female college student who starred in the 20-year-old, can also have no sense of violation, or like Gao Ying, witnessing aging is the norm of life?
"Young" often records the comfort of life, enough money to maintain the skin, a happy mood, and the mentality is no different from when you were young.
Probably this is an excellent template for being a "woman", but it is not necessarily a good actress.
A recent photo of Gao Ying
After entering the twilight years, Gao Ying was still busy.
Tv series are constantly invited, although they are all "mother" characters who are similar in age and do not have many roles, but she will follow the crew.
In addition to serving as the vice chairman of the Jiangsu Filmmakers Association, Gao Ying added the title of president of the Jiangsu Reciters Association, and there are various social activities such as judges, seminars, and grassroots performances that need to be dealt with.
Gao Ying, who worked so hard, added a few more wrinkles to his face, which was too normal.
In terms of their "image" creation, the old actor may care most about the external image.
A recent photo of Gao Ying
In addition to treating age, old actors like Gao Ying are different from current actors, and the basic mentality of being an actor is also different between the two generations.
As early as the 1980s, Gao Ying performed the drama "Goodbye, Paris" with the troupe in Chu County, Anhui Province.
In order to create an atmosphere, the premiere of the movie "The Return of the Swallow" starring her was held at the same time, and the cheers and shouts of the audience were deafening.
At that time, China's cultural environment was in a state of "a hundred flowers blooming", and such support was rare compared to actors earlier than Gao Ying.
But this cheer did not make Gao Ying feel proud, but made her a little nervous, she stood on the stage and said calmly:
"Film and television and stage dramas are all comprehensive arts, and as the protagonist, they should not be indispensable, otherwise they will have a future."
Not only that, after the performance, she had no time to remove her makeup, so she went with everyone to carry the stage props, and there was no star shelf at all.
A recent photo of Gao Ying
If you say "scene words" everyone will say, but this may "drop the coffee position" behavior, but the current actor will certainly not do.
Most of them, whether they are big stars or small stars in the second and third tiers, may even need an assistant to help carry a carry-on bag.
In the past, most of the old actors came from the general public, with grassroots identity and love for acting, with excellent acting skills to highlight the siege, not as complicated as today's showbiz.
For them, acting may be nothing more than a profession.
Just like Gao Ying, before officially embarking on the road of artistic performance, she was just an ordinary mechanic.
In the face of the transformation of life, Gao Ying said, "I am also a lucky person to be able to go to the screen", but to us, this is more like the humility of the strong.
When he was young, Gao Ying was indeed a beautiful embryo in a thousand miles, but the opportunity to "walk on the screen" at the beginning was not a "chance from heaven".
Gao Ying
Since Gao Ying started kindergarten, she is the kind of child in the class who loves to sing and dance the most.
Later, she went south from Beijing to settle in the ancient city of Nanjing with her father, an instructor at the Military Academy, and became an active member of the school's literary and art propaganda team when she went to Guanghuamen Middle School in Nanjing.
But after graduating from high school in 1974, Gao Ying was assigned to the fifth operation area of the port management office on the bank of the Yangtze River in Nanjing, where he became an ordinary mechanic.
At this time, the direction of her life seems to be getting farther and farther away from the road of literature and art.
Gao Ying, who loves literature and art wholeheartedly, has become a literary and artistic activist in the unit, and whenever there is a literary and artistic performance, she is indispensable to say allegro, gong and drum words, and announce the curtain on the stage.
Gao Ying
Gao Ying said of the experience: "I have longed to be an actor since I was a child."
This wish was also "realized" by herself in May 1977 when the Jiangsu Provincial Repertory Theatre openly recruited students.
"At that time, art schools had not yet resumed enrollment, and it was a great joy to have the opportunity to study acting and become an actor."
At the age of 21, she sincerely and emotionally performed a scene of a lathe worker working.
Gao Ying thus stood out from thousands of competitors and officially entered the provincial drama troupe.
But she is still some way from truly embarking on the path of professional performing arts.
She needs to have the opportunity to participate in the work, and the premise of getting the opportunity is that the performance is mature and professional enough, at least to have her own masterpiece.
Gao Ying
But compared to the dream, the reality Gao Ying is facing at the moment is cruel.
The old unit was unwilling to let her go, and if she wanted to study at the Provincial Drama Theater, there was only one way: to study in her spare time, and such unrealistic arrangements did not make Gao Ying retreat.
During the day, she will work as usual, and when she is a student, she will seriously consider the performance practice and work hard.
Gao Ying is good at internalizing her skills and thus absorbing them into her own performance characteristics, which makes her stand out among the new students, and her performances are extremely dazzling.
Gao Ying, who has been tested by reality, has a solid basic skill and a more and more resolute personality, and Gao Ying has since had the bottom card to meet opportunities and challenges.
Poster of "The Two of Them and Them"
The second opportunity came in 1978.
In the middle of a certain physical fitness class, a thin and somewhat trembling voice of a young girl on the phone was heard, and the tone was a little impatient, to the effect that she was asking about her seriously ill and hospitalized mother.
At the end of the conversation, the air only became quieter than before, but the atmosphere of the whole class became solemn.
As if everyone could hear the uneasiness and eagerness in the girl's heart, everyone was waiting with the girl for a reply from the hospital on the other side of the phone.
Suddenly, the girl jumped up, and the girl finally heard the news of her mother's safety, and everyone laughed along with it, and the sense of joy seemed to be real.
This is not a real "family affair" of a certain student, but a sketch that Gao Ying was named to perform, but it still attracted everyone's empathy.
The person who named Gao Ying's performance was the director Sang Arc.
Stills from "The Two of Them and Them"
The female lead of the comedy "He and Them" needs to play a pair of twins, and "Fang Fang" is quiet, "Yuanyuan" is lively, and the male lead actors "Yang Dalin" and "Yang Xiaolin" are also twins.
The complex character relationship, the difference in the personalities of the two characters, and how the female lead actor can properly express it through her own lines, actions and emotions are a difficult "problem" that cannot be underestimated.
Director Sang Arc is already an old director of Shanghai Film Studio, and he is also extremely cautious about the choice of female lead actors.
Thinking about the actresses who are currently known, there seems to be no suitable candidate, and he hopes that there will be fresh blood injected, so he came to the repertory theater to select candidate actors.
Sang Arc went to the Jiangsu Provincial Repertory Theatre, where Gao Ying was located, and the actor who played the "audience" into the play was Gao Ying himself.
Gao Ying
At this time, Gao Ying was just a student who had just graduated from the first phase and came to the second college training class.
Compared with her classmates, she is a class in her spare time, compared with the old students, she also lacks experience and tempering, and there are still many loopholes and deficiencies in her acting skills.
However, Gao Ying's sincere, unpretentious and highly immersive performance instantly captured Sang Arc's heart.
He clearly knows that the performance without leaving a trace is malleable, and it is possible to adapt to the characteristics of two personalities and characters, and the blind set of performance templates is doomed to be tasteless.
In this way, Gao Ying once again got the opportunity through sketch performance, and this time he got the opportunity to star in the film "He and Them".
Gao Ying
Perhaps the first two opportunities in life are related to "sketch performance", compared to "hidden" behind the screen performance, Gao Ying is more interested in live performance, infecting the audience with instant emotional emotions.
This emotional seed buried in her heart also affected her career path choices in the future.
Before this, Gao Ying was not without confusion, or defects and deficiencies exposed.
After she became famous, she was relatively "paranoid" about the role and the film, and was also affected by the "defects and deficiencies" at the beginning, but she felt the pulse of acting.
For example, in 1982, Gao Ying starred in Huang Yan in the love film "Caiqiao" filmed by Xi'an Film Studio.
One of the scenes is of a stuntman falling into the water instead of her, on a steep roadside slope with a deep river down the slope.
However, Gao Ying considered the need to highlight the authenticity of the characters, and finally felt that it would be more coherent and natural to perform the whole process by himself.
In the end, she really fell into the river with a car.
Stills from "The Return of the Swallow"
In the 1986 film "Amorous Hat", the heroine Tian Jing, played by Gao Ying, was a staff member of the Snake Research Institute.
In order to understand how to deal with snakes, she followed the crew to The Wuzhou Snake Park, which is known as the area with the most snakes.
In order not only to understand a little knowledge of snakes, but to "taste the taste of snakes", Gao Ying, under the guidance of the snake girl, personally reached out and grabbed the cold and slippery snake.
Such a bold move, even the staff accompanying the visit were stunned.
Performing a role, you have to become that role, and experiencing the experience that role should have is Gao Ying's consistent attitude towards filming, which is her "paranoia".
It is also the "paranoia" that Gao Ying needs most in her heart.
Stills from Gao Ying
She once did not have this "paranoia", and she really suffered some hardships.
After the success of "The Two of Them and Them", Gao Ying participated in the filming of the movie "Wait until the mountains are full of red leaves".
Her success means that when she performs "Square" and "Round", she has just the right control of the characters, and her performance is very good and recognized by the public.
However, it does not mean that she has become a good enough "actor".
She has a plot when playing the singer Wu Suqin:
Wu Suqin played a song at the party, unfortunately, when filming, Gao Ying at that time thought that as long as he imitated it decently, he could do it, and he knew that vocal music experts saw it and showed the stuffing.
They pointed out that her mouth shape was not authentic and unprofessional, and the flaws in her mouth were too small, the root cause of which was that she was not familiar with the laws of luck of singers.
During the filming of the drama "Dating", Gao Ying also encountered the problem of performance deviating from the role.
Stills from Gao Ying
Gao Ying, who has learned his lesson, will do one more step before any subsequent film is filmed: enrich the experience of the relevant characters.
This "paranoia" will not harm people, and even help her to succeed again.
This film that can be seen as her "transformation" is "The Return of Yan".
Lu Yan, the female no. 1 grassland doctor in "The Return of Yan", is a typical female intellectual with glasses, a casual suit, and a thick hair combed backwards.
Stills of Gao Ying in "Return of Yan"
The plot of the film pulls the audience back to 1957, when the hostess, Gong Yan, made two suggestions to xie Zhixin (played by Yuan Yue), the leader of the medical school, and was mistakenly classified as a rightist;
She would rather sacrifice her love in order not to affect the future of her sweetheart Lin Hanhua (played by Dashi Chang) to study abroad, so she resolutely filed for divorce.
He was sent to Inner Mongolia, gave birth to a daughter (Zhang Xiaolei), and lived with veterinarian Sha Weihao for twenty years, while having love.
Gao Ying himself is very different from "Lu Yan" in terms of image, temperament, and even life experience.
In order to play this role well, she read the scar novel "Replayed Flowers" and visited directors with similar life backgrounds and similar life experiences in similar times to get inspiration.
Finally, after indirectly experiencing the feelings of the characters and deeply understanding the deep love for the people and the open-mindedness to the persecution in the hearts of the other party, Gao Ying understood the "soul" of Lu Yan's image.
The film was eventually nominated for the "Golden Bear Award" at the 31st Berlin Film Festival, and Gao Ying has truly become "the youth of a generation" since then.
At the same time, Gao Ying was also praised by his predecessors, with the performance characteristics of "simple, natural, restrained, deep and delicate".
Gao Ying
Gao Ying, who has many screen masterpieces, has always had an obsession with the origin of his drama actor, and finally re-selected his "original heart": drama actors.
She became the vice chairman of the Jiangsu Film and Dramatists Association and the president of the Jiangsu Provincial Reading Artists Association, holding several positions and full of energy, but only her presence on the screen became rare.
On the issue of marriage, she only talked about the fact that her husband would accompany her to experience the "life of the role", who the specific surname was, what the relationship between the two was, and the situation of the children, the outside world did not know.
Perhaps, while everyone laments that Gao Ying looks like a "changed person", it is more like her focus on her acting career and a disguised praise for being an actor.
She is still active in her favorite career field, accepting the changes brought about by the years in her appearance, but she has never forgotten her original intention.
It is always a perfect interpretation of what the "youth of a generation" should look like.