Photo/Courtesy of respondents
killer
The birth of a classic character is tantamount to digging up ore from deep into the center of the earth, revealing a part of the human unconscious that endures. In the TV series "Undocumented Crime", Lee Toyota is the ore.
Before filming began, director Lu Xing's vision of Li Toyota was Anton Ziggy in "Old Nobody", a cold-blooded killer who was anti-logical and anti-experienced and anti-human, or Jin Jiunan in "Yellow Sea", who fought for his life in the long-term edge and decadence. Li Toyota should also not look vicious, no different from everyone else, the horror comes from his disregard for life, and the stress response seems to respond to everything with violence. The casting team found out the photos of actors who had played gangsters in recent years, but they were not right, some of them were too recognizable and diluted the suspense, some of the acting all relied on blowing beards and staring, and Lu Xing was afraid of that kind of performance.
There is also a photo posted on the whiteboard - the casting director has recommended it several times, but it has not been settled - the actor Ning Li.
Lu Xing remembered. Around 2010, he met Ning Li at a dinner party in which many people participated, when Ning Li had moved back to China from abroad - before going abroad, he graduated from the Shanghai Theater Academy and acted in many plays, and was quite well-known in the theater circle, but the young director Lu Xing met the students. "He's very interesting, his eyes are dramatic, but he's gentle, not the same personality as the actors I usually come into contact with, and you can even feel that (when there are many people) that he's a bit reserved, and then there's tension." Live-action Sven, while past characters are more comedic. Lu Xing remembered that this was the case.
"Ning Li can play Li Toyota." The producer said suddenly.
Lu Xing thought he was nonsense, and he thought about it again, his acting skills were too good and he was not a familiar face, and he even had a sense of dislocation, so he could try it. The script and character Lee Toyota thus handed over to Ning Li.
Undocumented Crimes (2017)
When "Undocumented Crimes" appeared, Ning Li had returned to China for ten years. He has experienced a difficult adaptation period, running a group interview and gaining very little, and when he is too anxious, he will be unable to control his temper, which naturally does not help. He still can only act one or two plays a year, "what play can be performed, as long as the heart is not too rejected." That's the job. Just like a doctor, whether the patient is a hero or a murderer, your duty is to bring him back to life. ”
Ning Li took over the role of Li Toyota.
It is difficult for people who have watched "Undocumented Crimes" to forget Li Toyota, wearing a torn cotton jacket, big and small eyes, not talking, tearing off the mouthpiece when smoking and smoking upside down, which is chilling. Ning Li was obviously also very happy, and repeatedly took out the sentence "What time is it dark in your house" to scare people - a line that Li Toyota used to intimidate the other party when blackmailing, and finally showed a dangerous smile.
Li Toyota also unconsciously smiles when he kills people, which even Ning Li himself does not realize until the audience reminds him. But he watched a lot of Animal World in the preparation phase, and after nearly five years he can still vividly remember and remind me of one of the important points: when a leopard or a lion is in control of the prey, they no longer look at the prey, they just look around, into a relaxed and pleasant state - although we don't know what the animal's smile is like - it is announcing to the world that I am the winner. Therefore, when Ning Li portrayed Li Toyota, he understood it as the animalistic part of human instinct, balancing justice and reason.
Even if people can't recognize Ning Li, they can recognize Li Toyota.
After this, Ning Li entered the stage of no longer worrying about the drama, but most of the killer characters with faces followed. In early 2021, a project called "Police Honor" approached him, and before he opened the script, he thought he was going to play another antisocial personality criminal arrested by the police, and stereotypes became part of his self-perception.
Not this time. Ning Li read the script of "Police Honor", as if watching "Today I Rest", which tells the story of the police's struggle between their duties and personal lives, the protagonist is the police officer of the police station, and what he faces every day is not a major case, but a short parent. The police officer he wants to play Chen Xincheng is middle-aged, and when he was young, his wife and daughter were separated due to work mistakes, and he was trapped and passive, until he met li Dawei, a trainee police officer, who was young and reckless as in the past. Seeing Chen Xincheng, the audience was surprised again, was this the person who played Li Toyota at that time?
Lu Xing said, it seems that you will not be surprised how well he plays.
Police Honor (2022)
actor
The interview was conducted online, I asked if I could connect the video, he politely refused, and sent a paragraph: "I have social fear, I don't like to take pictures, I am not used to video, I don't know why I chose to be an actor, and I like it!" Maybe the character can make up for these deficiencies. ”
Ning Li's first stage play was in the third grade of primary school, a total of ten minutes, telling the story of a small group in Chongqing under the white terror, Ning Li wore a small round glasses and a long scarf, played a sympathetic and did not want to overly intervene in current affairs of the university professor, and finally was moved by the students' deeds and threw himself into the revolution.
"Very childish performance angry, acting helpless, at that time knew that acting is a collective thing, no one can do it in the absence, and this thing does not focus all the aura on whom, everyone has everyone's point." 」 Ning Li just thought it was funny at that time, but the performance was still far away from him, "No one in the family did this." ”
In high school, Ning Li followed his father, who was exiled during the Cultural Revolution, from Beijing to Anhui, and before graduation, a friend took him to see the drama "Chinese Dream". In the newly built Anhui Grand Theater, Ning Li was nailed like a nail in place - the curtain, the lights, the actors created a dream scene, and he felt a trance.
That year, he fell off the list because of greed for the college entrance examination, and he had not had time to think about the future, and now he is a little confused when he thinks about it. In short, the next year, he decided to go to the Shanghai Theater Academy, went through three interviews, borrowed back the cultural textbooks he had already thrown away, and immersed himself in his father's office in the summer. The weather was hot and there were many mosquitoes, so he lit more than a dozen plates of mosquito coils in the house and watched the mosquitoes snap and fall down.
"I was so impressed, the first day I went to class I was like in a dream, did I really come here?" Everyone gets up early in the morning to learn to sing, dance, physical lessons, line lessons, and read all kinds of scripts - this kind of book is usually at home, my dad always says you don't read those idle books, take a good look at your homework - it seems that the things that are not doing the right thing have become the main business, and I suddenly feel that there is a light in my life. At that time, Ning Li was only 19 years old.
After graduating from the opera and being assigned to the Shanghai People's Art Theater, several naïve juvenile roles fell into the hands of Ning Li, in "The Legend of Little Pudong" is the simple and kind unemployed young man Atugen, in "Brother Trick" is the dexterous and witty poor boy Brother. But there is a role that has become a certain confirmation of his life, in the 1992 release of "Que Li RenJia", Ning Li played the lively and flashy heart of Kong Weiben, the Kong family is the big family of Confucius's hometown of Qufu, under the impact of the tide of reform, Kong Wei originally wanted to quit his public office as a teacher to study abroad, the stubborn old father was the "conservative force" in his eyes, and the grandfather Kong Lingtan who was away from home was regarded as a hero by him. Kong Weiben once spoke his heart in the relationship with his grandfather: "I think life is like a charge, as soon as the military trumpet sounds, you have to rush forward." He didn't care if he was dead. If you rush up, it is a victory, a brilliant victory. ”
"Trick Brother" (1993)
When he was young, he played the leading role, worked with good directors and respected actors, and produced good works, ning Li almost touched the ceiling. By the age of 28, when the spring breeze was triumphant, he felt a kind of age crisis - even when he was a little boy, Ning Li felt that he was old, and when he graduated from elementary school, he knew that he could no longer watch a movie for five cents, and he had to spend a dime, and he would soon graduate from junior high school, high school, become an old man and then die, like in the movie "Flat Eagle Grave", dig out a skeleton. He cried bitterly in the bed—something had to be done.
As if to fulfill his unfulfilled wish for Kong Weiben, in 1996, Ning Li went to the United States.
As a result, it's just stepping from one quagmire to another. He talked many times about the dilemma when he first went abroad, buying the cheapest canned food because of lack of money, adding some water to make soup, going to a second-hand shop to buy jeans for five dollars and a sweater for ten dollars, delivering newspapers, working as a housing agent, and so on. On the eve of finally having the opportunity to become a regular employee of the post office and enter the stability system, he suddenly knocked himself a few times: What did I come to the United States? What do you really like? The answer is, still like acting.
"Suddenly I feel that my life is so long, from childhood to do this and that according to my father's requirements, it is difficult to find something I really like, then it is willful." 」 Ning Li was admitted to the University of Minnesota as a graduate student in film production, "At that time, I didn't know what the future would be like, I had to work, I had to live, and I had to pay for film at my own expense." Not only did this thing not bring in income, but it also made me overdraw financially, and the only thing that supported me was the love for it. If you like it, you can do it. Just like falling in love, the noon break time is only 20 minutes, the first night of work has not slept well, but the boyfriend said let's have a meal together, let's meet somewhere, it feels like playing chicken blood, it just has to go. Like, no way. ”
Minnesota is notoriously cold, and for a while it was better to leave the residence at 6 o'clock in the morning and walk to the editing room for 20 minutes. Later, "Undocumented Crimes" was filmed in Harbin, from December to February, the temperature outside could freeze people in ten minutes, and the creaking ice and snow reminded him of the road minnesota used to walk, remembering the slightly sentimental self-touch at that time, and feeling that "I am working hard for my dreams." The cold has since become a memory, shivering, feeling excited, and adrenaline rushing.
In "Que Li Ren Ren", Grandpa Kong Lingtan said to Kong Weiben earlier: People with real ambitions do not take shortcuts. Of course, such a life is very difficult and requires a little real courage.
After many years, Ning Li realized that the anxious 30-year-old was simply too young, and realized that life is a process of experience and experience, "all of which are for one person to walk through on his own."
The Que Li Ren Ren (1992)
Like a Father like a Son
Ning Li said that what really made him mature was to become a father.
When he was a child, his father often traveled on business, Ning Li imagined that he was a secret agent, Silala played with his semiconductors, promised to take him where to play before the business trip, and forgot everything after returning, someone must have impersonated him. But fathers are gentler than mothers who are strict with their children. The newly published "Sanmao Wanderer" villain book costs several cents, and he hesitated to tell his mother, while his father said that it was a good thing and gave support.
When Ning Li was 11 years old, his mother died unexpectedly in a car accident. It was a Wednesday afternoon, and he was playing chess with his sister and brother, "This chess is very special, it is made by hand. In an interview with People magazine, he recalled, "At that time, families were generally relatively poor, and buying a chess match was also an expense." My mother was a doctor, so she drew a chessboard herself, used a rubber stopper on a hospital infusion bottle as a chess piece, and then asked someone who knew calligraphy to write on it, a car, a horse, an elephant, a taxi, and a handsome man. Playing and playing, suddenly a cousin came and said that my mother had been hit by a car and died. At that time, my sister was crying, I was a complete child, I don't know what it means, do you want her to come back at night to cook for us? Later, every day, gradually, I realized that life was different from before. ”
My father bought a hand-cranked phonograph, I don't know if it was for this reason, and later music occupied an important position in Ning Li's life. He loves the Beatles, the lyrics "The love you take equals the love you make," and he sees character performance as a symphony, or life is a symphony, "It's sometimes fast, sometimes it's slow, and anything that brings beauty to people is rhythmic." ”
But his father, who had been gentle, began to be harsh, mischievous, and sometimes scolded.
Later, Ning Li asked his father why he had become so harsh. His father said that his grandfather died very early and that his father was absent during his own upbringing, so he was particularly worried about becoming an irresponsible and derelict father.
20 years ago, Ning Li also became a father. On the day the eldest daughter was born, Ning Li saw her in the delivery room, "I was really surprised - how can the newborn child be so ugly, wrinkled like a frog, green and not pulled, at that time I thought this child is normal?" My dad called me and I told him my daughter was born and he said it was great, was the baby pretty? I don't even know what to say. What the book says is a light or anything huge sacred, you can only say that you saw a child crumpled. ”
"But slowly, when she can really look at you, when her little hand can grasp your finger, in that instant, you suddenly feel, my God, I am willing to give everything for her." 」
He kept a page of his daughter's homework notebook, which contained a two-line diary. At that time, he thought that his daughter was perfunctory and was very angry, and when he tore it off, his daughter looked at him in shock, "There was no crying, no crying at all, but that kind of not crying was more heart-wrenching than crying, so I secretly glued it up and kept it all the time, reminding myself that one heart and another heart can be reasonable, but it can't hurt it." ”
When Ning woke up in the middle of the night one day when he was a child, the whole family lived in a room, and he saw his father sewing his school bag under the lamp and crying. It was as if he had finally begun to understand his father, rough, contradictory, cautious.
His father had a profound influence on him, and how to live seriously when life was slightly misaligned, try to find fun, not complain, and always be tolerant and understanding of people and things was learned from his father.
"Father" is thus reflected in many of his roles: when he starred in "Borderlands", he took a picture of his father when he was young and told the crew that a retired, slightly old-fashioned old teacher should dress like this; In "Police Honor", Chen Xincheng repeatedly told his daughter to close the doors, windows and gas when she was at home alone, which he often explained to his children in his life; Even Li Toyota, who is so indifferent to life in "Undocumented Crimes", kills the forensic doctor's wife and daughter because the forensic doctor indirectly led to the death of his son he never met, which is the revenge of his father.
If Ning Li wanted to create a story by himself, he thought that he would also be willing to write about family affection.
The Myth of Love (2021)
Film and television is a sugar-coated cannonball
If you look closely at every role ning li plays, you will find that he is keen on realism, Chekhov-style unbridled appearance and dark tide, and is also keen to dig deep into human nature in the performance-
"Opponent" with three spies as the protagonists borrows the spy battle shell to discuss the plight of people to middle age, Ning Li is the most cold-blooded Lin Yu, in order to work to cut off all life, he knows that he plays the "villain", but also plays an ordinary person, will fall into great confusion and sadness when there is a contradiction between work and life;
The Rival (2021)
Liu Zhengyi, a retired teacher in Borderlands, always holds a copy of "The Lord of the Flies", which is Ning Li's design for the inner beliefs and tragic spirit of the characters, and Goldin's instinctual authoritarians overwhelm the democratic factions that pay attention to governance, strongly suggesting Liu Zhengyi's disappointment with people themselves;
In "The Silent Truth", zhang Chao, a law professor and criminal defense lawyer, in order to fulfill the students' last wishes, finally went from silence to adventure, Ning Li felt that they were tragic, under the persecution of the collusion of officials and businessmen, overturning the case was like a grasshopper shaking a tree, in the crew he inadvertently read Shakespeare's "Sonnets", suddenly tears rained down, so he used the mouth of the character to express his praise for them: "There is no Fang Yan that does not finally wither or destroy, but your long summer will never wither, nor will you lose your pure red fang, or the god of death boasts that you are wandering in his shadow." When you are as long as ever in the immortal poem, as long as there are human beings, or human beings have eyes, this poem will live on and give you life"...
The Silent Truth (2020)
The wholehearted performance is like a dream in reality, and Ning Li also seeks refuge in the dream. "Sometimes I have a nightmare at night and wake up feeling fortunately just a dream; I'm playing someone else's nightmare, but I know I'm not him and I'm safe; And when I play a hero, I can experience the glory of a hero in my dreams. So my own experience is that when I enter the moment of self-forgetfulness, when I enter the character, it is as if I have entered a meditative state. Ning Li said, "This is where the actors are addicted." ”
Sometimes Ning Li will also look at the feedback of the audience, and when he sees the praise for him, he can't help but be proud. But more often than not, he told himself that the audience's love is actually projected on the characters, "not necessarily like us actors, we just interpret the roles in their hearts and restore a life for them." ”
In those lives, the audience is also seeking refuge, "film and television is a sugar-coated cannonball, comedy, youth film, suspense film are its sugar coating, it is to use this thing to make the audience accept it, and then use the cannonball to actually affect the audience." 」 Ning Li said, "And the story is a ritual, comedy or tragedy, the audience entering another world, it is also a meditation, it will make you forget a lot of reality, but also let you feel more." ”
Southern People Weekly reporter Meng Yiyi