At the recently concluded Beijing International Film Festival, Wu Yanshu won the film "Mom! won the Best Actress Award. When the news of the award was announced, the camera shook to the awardees Liu Xiaoqing on the stage, as well as Ma Su, Qin Hailu and Zhang Yimou offstage, and the tears in their eyes showed praise for the actor's enduring work - Wu Yanshu is 84 years old and has starred in nearly 50 film and television drama works, most of which are supporting roles.
At the time of the award, Xi Meijuan, a 67-year-old actress, said that Wu Yanshu's recognition was "a great encouragement to our middle-aged and elderly actors." Xi Meijuan played a rival role with Wu Yanshu in this movie. In China, there are not many movies and TV series featuring elderly actors, and in family dramas, they often act as a background, either very bitter or annoying, Wu Yanshu described, "running around, every episode", but does not show real personality.
Vivid elderly actresses like Wu Yanshu are particularly eye-catching. In the middle-class romance film "Beijing Meets Seattle's Love Letter", she interprets the elderly love of a Chinese couple in a side plot; In "See You Again in Nara," she advises young people, "Don't get married because of stress." Her characters are all a little special, or rather, have a modern feel.
Wu Yanshu's career in show business began after her retirement. In the past, she was an actor in the Shanxi Provincial Drama Theatre until she retired step by step, returned home to take care of her sick husband and elderly parents, and became an "old wife" in the traditional sense, after which her husband and parents died and she was taken to Beijing by her daughter. She was 72 years old and a new life suddenly began.
Young audiences like her and feel that they have found things in her role that past film and television drama characters did not have, such as freedom, independence, and a sense of boundaries. For this old man who has experienced two centuries, the great era of change has brought her a wealth of interpretation materials. She played the fallen aristocrat in the old bungalow in Shanghai, and also played the lonely rural old man who could not read a word. Wu Yanshu has her own aesthetic for the script, and she cares about the vitality and uniqueness of the characters.
Movie "Love and Affection"
It has to do with the environment in which she grew up. Wu Yanshu's father studied international finance at Waseda University in Japan and was a professor, and his father felt that "children are many mothers and mothers are bitter", so he only needed one child, so she became a rare only child in that era. Wu Yanshu's mother was a college student during the Republic of China period, majoring in Chinese literature and also studying home economics, and since Wu Yanshu was a child, she was trained to "everyone's boudoir". Originally, her mother, who was traditionally educated in the extended family, did not want her to be an actress, but her father eventually supported her, "people do what they like."
What her mother taught her was the resilience of life. When she was young, Wu Yanshu performed with the Repertory Theatre throughout the country, sometimes performing 5 times a day, and her mother helped her take care of her daughter at home. My mother was born in the early years, and then the family situation changed, but she worked hard and was healthy all her life, and she died without illness at the age of 94. Wu Yanshu played the declining nobleman living in the old bungalow in Shanghai in "The Golden Years", which refers to the posture of her mother and her friends. In the drama troupe, Wu Yanshu worked until the age of 65, and then her husband fell ill, and she plunged into the care of her husband. She admits that women need to bear more burdens in their lives, but she is like a mother, working hard to solve difficulties.
Wu Yanshu has a daughter who is now working as a screenwriter in Beijing. After her husband and mother died in 2010, her daughter took her to Beijing to settle down. At the beginning of coming to Beijing, Wu Yanshu was bent on helping her daughter take care of her grandson, but she unexpectedly received some acting opportunities, so she was able to often leave the housework and go out. Now, she has more and more films, and has begun to live alone, no longer interfering in the lives of her daughter and grandson.
Director Yang Lina uses the word "treasure" to describe Wu Yanshu and actors like her, and she has a strange fate with Wu Yanshu - in Jia Zhangke's "Platform", she played an actor in Shanxi's literary troupe. It is an indisputable fact that there are few good old actors active on the screen today, and many old actors have disappeared, after all, those elderly characters who are often used as backgrounds also lack attraction to good actors. In addition, the elderly have physical weaknesses, many directors have to choose middle-aged actors, and then "turn these actors into old", but many middle-aged actors face is too well maintained, wrinkles are few, makeup is not natural enough.
Movie "Mom! 》
Wu Yanshu has no physical problems. Movie "Mom! The life scenes in "" show Wu Yanshu's own life to a considerable extent - splitting a word horse, flat support, kicking legs, swallow flying (yoga movements with stomachs pressed to the ground and limbs cocked). In this play, there are emotional outbursts, as well as running, climbing the window sill, drenching in water, standing in the cold sea water dancing scene, Yang Lina was originally worried about the old man's body, so she made sufficient protective preparations, and many of them were not used, and the play was also killed 3 days in advance. Wu Yanshu is very proud of this, she said, when she was young, she was the basketball team in the school, and now that there is no one to team up with her, she plays by herself, proficient in fancy basketball and dribbling.
When we met, she carried a white canvas bag like a young man and walked in a muscular manner. Talk to her, she has clear ears, a strong memory, she does not repeat the rutting words, and even points out the things you have mentioned repeatedly. Eating, she has no taboos, last month in Yunnan filming a few meals of peppers, the result of a return to the north, water and soil discomfort, voice dumb, not long after, she got the film, dumb voice on the podium.
Wu Yanshu feels that when people are old, it is difficult to have gains and losses, precisely because there is not much expectation for the next life, which makes her usher in a new freedom after retirement. She doesn't need to pick up movies she doesn't like for a living now. When there are plays she likes, she acts, and when there is no, she lives in simplicity and lives the life of an ordinary old man. Acting in movies was a coincidence for her, she just didn't want people to become useless, "old, sitting at home, very boring".
The following is Wu Yanshu's self-statement.
Don't like the character of the elderly without personality
When I received the award, my voice went hoarse. I felt so sorry at the time, because I couldn't speak, my brain was a little confused, and my speech was incoherent.
I didn't prepare the acceptance speech, and I didn't think I could win the award. But my agent said, Grandma, do you want to prepare an acceptance speech? At that time, I thought that film festivals are generally won by foreign people who have won more awards, so how can it be my turn? That day, when I was announced, I was a little confused.
Walking up the steps, I met Liu Xiaoqing, Xiaoqing walked down the steps to pick me up, in fact, I have seen many of her films, but I have never met. I saw that her eyes were tearful, and I was immediately excited, so I went to wipe her tears. Then I walked over to the microphone and suddenly realized, what about the trophy? I looked at Xiaoqing, Xiaoqing also looked at me, Xiaoqing was also excited, said, where is the trophy? The host said, behind you. At this time, I forgot all the abdominal drafts I had just typed.
Later, I saw that many actresses shed tears when they gave me the award. They are all actresses with very good acting skills, and they also know that this heavy award is not easy to come by. When I came on stage before, I kept thinking, why didn't Xi Meijuan, who played my daughter, not have it? I hope Xi Meijuan won the award, her performance is textbook level performance.
When I chose the script, I didn't like to take on the role of an old man without personality, running around in the play, she couldn't do without, but it didn't work. In my opinion, there is no drama, and that kind of role is not interesting to play.
I act, every character must be different, must be different from myself, play the old man can not play heavy. Every time the character comes, you have to analyze the character's experience, habits, place of growth, family environment, education, and what she may do every day according to the material provided by the script to create the character. Sometimes, I have to understand this old man from the language of other family members in the script, for example, this grandmother is in good health, so what kind of a good law is it?
TV series "Golden Years"
I lived in Shanghai when I was a child, I know how the owner of the old bungalow in Shanghai lived, and when I play Grandma Nan in "The Golden Years", I will think of the state of my mother and some of her friends. When I was in the Shanxi Drama Theatre, I played Liu Hulan, went to the countryside to experience life, and met many young people and old people in the countryside. Later, when I experienced life in the countryside (intellectual youth went to the countryside), I observed the characters, although at that time I observed more young people, but now let me create an old lady in the countryside, I don't have much difficulty.
Acting in Mom! I kept thinking about my mother. I was the only daughter in the family, in 1976, the Tangshan earthquake, when I was in a rural village in Hebei Province to exercise, one day, I suddenly saw my mother in front of me. At that time, the traffic was not convenient, there was no car at all, I said Mom, how did you come? She said she came by someone's truck along the way. My mother heard about the earthquake and was worried, in fact, Tangshan was far away from us, but she was going to see me, because at that time, it was very slow to write letters, there was no mobile phone, and there was no telephone in the countryside.
That's how I felt this vitality of my mother from her, and I was able to catch this feeling and use it on the mother I played. My mother used to be a showgirl, but then she adapted quickly, did everything herself, and she changed quickly.
In this play, the mother I played was a very "well-made" mother at the beginning, and the daughter was like a mother, who had to take care of her and was afraid of pain when she went to the doctor. But as soon as I learned that my daughter had Alzheimer's disease, she immediately reversed, I want to be a strong mother, I want to exercise.
In this play, I climbed the window once for my daughter, and my hand was just about to hold the window sill, and the director should have stopped. As a result, the director did not stop at that time, but I had already braced myself, and I continued to climb up. The director is also very cute, she is probably worried that I can't go up to the ground and forgot to stop.
Acting is not a relaxed industry, it is a hard-working industry, no matter how old, as long as the role needs, I will do it seriously.
Your wrinkles are too natural
There are not many cases of us being protagonists at this age. I acted in so many scenes, at the age of 80, I only played 3 main roles, and the others were all supporting roles. Of course, whether it is the main role or the supporting role, it must be played well. As an actor, we also hope that screenwriters will write more plays with middle-aged and elderly people as the protagonists, and we also hope that producers can cast such plays. There may be more opportunities for middle-aged male actors than women, but at my age, there will be fewer male-led plays.
I've never played an old man before. I used to act in drama troupes, the role of daughter-in-law or above has not been acted, played Liu Hulan for decades, retired to act in movies, TV series, are playing the elderly, this is a re-learning process, I will refer to some films.
I like Yoon Yoo Jeong from Korea and the old Japanese actor Kiki Kirin, and I will record their plays, go to see them often, and learn their performances. The film that impressed me most with the old man as the protagonist was the French movie "Love", the performances of the two old men were very subtle, there was not much language, they were both performing in shape and eyes, the scenes where the two people made eye contact, or the sound of props, to make them pay attention to each other. I've seen it many times.
Since the 1950s, I have been working in the Shanxi Provincial Drama Theatre until I retired in 2003, and I returned home, where my family lived in the Drama Theatre and had average economic conditions. When I was acting in dramas, I didn't think about going out to act in film and television works, and there were many tasks in the theater. Later, because there was a stage where everyone didn't have any performances, we were also very satisfied with the status quo.
Wu Yanshu in her youth
Later, the old director in our theater was old, and wanted to train a new director, he wanted to drag me to the director, I began to work as a drama director, I had a lot of work, sometimes I had to go to Beijing to participate in the show, until I retired in 2003, just when my husband was also ill, I took care of him at home. The drama theater sometimes called me back to help, in short, after becoming a director, I didn't think I would act again.
In 2010, my students were working as the actor coordinator of Zhang Jizhong's version of Journey to the West, and when they saw that I was okay at home, they said you come and play us a Vilambhava, and I went. At that time, not many dramas came to me, and everyone did not know me. After the performance, there were other assistant directors who left my phone, and some assistant directors saw a role, oh, this line is too long, more than one page to find a drama actor, think of me, so the east and west began one by one.
In 2015, an assistant director sent me a WeChat message, saying that there was a play, which is still confidential, hoping to find an actress with a face like more than 80 years old, but the best talent is in her 60s, and now they have not found it, or you will try it. After sending the photos over, I was asked to meet director Xue Xiaolu in the afternoon. It was "Beijing Meets Seattle 2", because she was going to go abroad to shoot, and she wanted to choose an actor in her 60s who was physically fit and could fly, to play a person in her 80s.
But now people in their 60s are well maintained, there are no wrinkles on their faces, and those in their 60s are like 40s, and they can only paint wrinkles, xue Xiaolu feels that the actors paint wrinkles that are not real.
When I was in the countryside in the fifties and sixties, I couldn't maintain it, the wind and the sun, she saw me (I was 77 years old at the time) and said that your wrinkles were too natural, so she chose me. Many of the directors I work with are women, and they like to make scenes of women, especially of elderly women.
Movie "Mom! 》
From the beginning of Xue Xiaolu, I began a new journey. Xiao Lu said, I will still look for you in the next play, I thought to myself, what about the next play? At that time, I didn't understand it, and as a result, "Seattle" was on fire. I met a Hong Kong actor who took my hand and said she regretted filling her face with too much, and she was envious of the wrinkles on my face, and she said they were beautiful.
At that time, they wanted to ask me to act, I was very happy, just hang out with them, I never made a particularly clear plan to say that I wanted to do something after retirement. It is usually doing housework at home, they remember me, call me, I tell the family, I will go to the play for a few days, they said good, good, they take care of the housework themselves, I went.
Young people and middle-aged people have experienced it, especially women, in the family, women will give more than men, but I think that is what I should do.
I feel now that I have a use, and I am very happy. My father, mother, and husband have all passed away, and since I came to Beijing, I have been serving my daughter and grandson. After that, my grandson went to study abroad, my daughter wrote the script, I had nothing to do, and the result was that I could act again, and everyone liked me in acting, and contributed performances for everyone, which I thought was very good.
When I was free, I learned to drive
I'm a person who can't be idle, and when I don't act, I'm busy at home. I still want to learn to drive, recently too busy to come, when idle, I will learn to drive, I have inquired about several car learning training courses.
I now live in my daughter's house, and my daughter lives outside the house and my grandson is abroad. We don't want to live together, I influence my daughter's writing, and when she was writing the script there, I asked her, what do you want to eat? Messed up her thinking. And then I'm ready for the role there, and she's coming too, Mom, what do you want to eat? We both found it particularly good to live apart.
For family relations, the approach adopted by me, my daughter, and my grandson is that the three of them live on each side, digest their own problems, and only talk about happy things when they meet. We don't have any contradictions because we don't live together. I don't care about her, she doesn't care about me, I don't care about my grandson, she doesn't care about my grandson. The three of us had three video sessions a week to talk about who had been working lately and where they were going.
Of course, my physical strength is different from that of my 20s, and I can still practice high and low bars in my 20s, and now I don't have that kind of strength. In these years, if you don't get along with it, it will pass, and it will not be said by you, and it will go away every second. So you have to get along with time.
Every morning, I would do sports, first do a minute of flat braces, swallow flying, kicking legs, playing basketball, and walking more than 6,000 steps. Sometimes when the phone calls come and I have to go to work quickly, I will do part of the exercise at the place where I am going to work, and come back to do a part of it.
Exercise, as long as you don't do it for a day, you will feel almost energetic if you do it tomorrow. They play mahjong and sit for a day, and they will have back pain, I will not, but the doctor advised me to protect my knees and eat a little ammonia.
More often than not, I'll be on my own. The owner of the pharmacy downstairs is an enthusiastic young man, and he doesn't have the medicine I want to buy, so he teaches me to buy medicine on my mobile phone. I usually don't like to chat in the yard, they love to say that the daughter-in-law is not good, that is not good, I don't have a daughter-in-law, I can't feel it, so I don't participate. To go downstairs, I would walk my six thousand or so steps, and then go home and watch movies and watch TV. I often look for movies on Douban to watch.
I was influenced by my father, when I originally wanted to go to the drama theater, my mother was opposed, she had the old thinking, she thought that actors were three teachings and nine streams, my father said, people have to do their favorite profession to do well, so I became an actor, otherwise I would go to the doctor. My father was very open-minded and he felt that everything was created by young people and that older generations had their own limitations.
Before my daughter brought me from Shanxi to Beijing, I took care of my family. After my father died, my husband fell ill again, and my husband died earlier than my mother, who helped me take care of my husband. He has to take medicine and oxygen every day, and he can't do without people, I don't feel hard, that's what I should do, get used to it. I walked everywhere and bought a bike later, which I already thought was good.
He died of illness at the age of 78, emphysema, the doctor wanted to intubate him, I said no, I am an absolutely decisive person, to let him walk away with dignity.
My mother died at the age of 94, and she was still playing with us 10 days before she died. I think it's all the course of life, just try your best. This kind of process, every family has, so I think people should be able to see openly, death is the only way, but the illness is not necessarily, do not be sad too much, do not cry in front of them.
A reporter asked me about "girlishness", and I was surprised, I thought I was making it. They had to ask me, ask me why I was girlish, and I said it might have something to do with my curiosity, with my love of play. I have a lot of dolls, my daughter and I will buy dolls when we see them, and my daughter will buy clothes for these dolls online. We hold dolls and we can always make up a scene. For example, I take a boy, she holds a girl, two people are boyfriend and girlfriend, just talk to each other, talk for a while and then quarrel, like acting there is an orgasm, there is an ending. When she was very young, after I put her socks on, I took her two feet and gave her the red detachment of women and the white haired women. Later, she danced with her son with her socks, and she said that this is how my grandmother played with me.
I'm a person who has no ambitions (laughs), I don't have anything to understand, I just do my daily work. Think so much, you can't reach it, aren't you embarrassed yourself? When I encounter something confusing, I don't do it, I do something else.
Interview, author: Liu Chuchu
Editor: Li Chun
Photo by Suri
Caption and end of the article: Courtesy of the interviewee
Operations Editor: Wen Wen
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