He was beaten all the way through life.
Author: Sui Kun
To ask who is the hottest recently, Gao Qiqiang is first, Zhang Songwen is second.
In the past few days, with the hit TV series "Crazy", Gao Qiqiang, played by Zhang Songwen, was "forced" from a fishmonger to a gangster step by step, and staged a very reverse "blackened life".
Zhang Songwen once again conquered the audience with his acting skills, so much so that the topic of #Chacha Zhang Songwen# has been hanging on the hot search. People laughed that Gao Qiqiang was either acting or Zhang Songwen.
It's too real to be true
Different from the symbolization and face of gangster characters in the past, Gao Qiqiang is an emotionally rich and three-dimensional underworld boss. On the one hand, he is desperate to protect his family and morality to his brothers, while on the other hand, he is cold-blooded and ruthless to his chess pieces, killing when he says.
Some people say that Gao Qiqiang, played by Zhang Songwen, interprets what "grayscale" is. This is an extremely tense evaluation, whether it can live depends on Zhang Songwen's acting skills.
So far, it seems, he has stood the test.
In "Crazy", Zhang Songwen vividly performs the changes of a low-level small person to the peak of power. From the fishmonger who was deceived at the beginning, to the later "forced to Liangshan", the first appearance, and finally completely blackened, the fish and meat people... How humble Gao Qiqiang was at the beginning, how black his hands were later.
Zhang Songwen contributed countless famous scenes in the play, and his attention to detail impressed the audience, allowing people to smell the fishy smell on the fish stall and the Hermes earth perfume on the gangster boss across the screen.
Zhang Songwen really put in the effort. When Gao Qiqiang sells fish, the process of killing and shaving. When someone goes to the stall to look for him, he will subconsciously pick up a handful of water in the tank, wash his hands, wipe it before talking to others.
This is an extremely real detail, too real to be true, as if Zhang Songwen had sold fish before.
Later, Gao Qiqiang inadvertently got involved in the vortex of underworld and evil forces, and took the initiative to give benefits to other accomplices when he got paid, ostensibly fairly, he wanted to pull his accomplices into the water, telling them that "everyone has something to do with this."
At that moment, Gao Qiqiang sat on the sofa, and the camera rotated, as if people saw Corleone, the godfather of Sicily.
In fact, this has always been Zhang Songwen's performance style. He endured the hardships of life and eventually honed himself into a life observer. The details of the fish stall owner's hand washing are that he personally saw the owner do this when he bought fish in the wet market.
The acting is all about the hardships of life
In the summer of 2020, "Hidden Corner" was a hit, and Zhang Songwen, who played the father of the male protagonist in the play, has completely come out of the circle with his acting skills.
In the play, he contributed a performance that was on the hot search.
That was Zhang Songwen's first scene in the group. After he played Zhu Yongping, who accidentally lost his daughter, he sat alone at a wonton stall to eat wontons.
Zhu Yongping sat in the position where his daughter often sat, burying his head, tears, and swallowing wontons one by one. He tried to restrain his emotions, but eventually cried until he couldn't even hold the spoon.
This performance became one of the most discussed episodes in the show, and the audience gave Zhang Songwen the highest praise. In the online vote, he was rated as the most popular actor in the play with 41% of the votes.
What is less known is that sitting there in the camera is Zhu Yongping, who has lost his daughter, and behind the camera is Zhang Songwen, who has lost his mother.
At the age of 13, Zhang Songwen's mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In order to comfort Zhang Songwen, his mother once accompanied him to Nanhua Temple in his hometown of Shaoguan, Guangdong Province one afternoon. The mother and son filled many springs with mineral water bottles, and the mother told him that it was a divine spring that could cure cancer, and the young Zhang Songwen was suspicious.
In the last days of her mother's life, Zhang Songwen needed to help her massage her abdomen every day. The ascites swelled so much that her mother was worse than dead, and Zhang Songwen kept begging the doctor to give her Dulending to relieve her pain.
In those days, the words "mother died" were like bricks hanging above his head, which could smash him all the time. He often went to school and suddenly ran to the hospital to check if his mother was still alive.
The false alarms again and again made Zhang Songwen feel tired. He once complained in his heart that "when will such days end", but felt extremely guilty about it after his mother's death. He later said: "I can't stop crying when I hear people mention my mother, and I don't get enough comfort for her in time." ”
He kneaded this life experience into the shaping of Zhu Yongping, and also into all the performances about life and death.
In Zhang Songwen's world, drama and life are always inseparable. After he was beaten by fate, the scars became the nourishment of his acting career.
In 2021, Zhang Songwen performed a "call from his family after failing the audition" on the stage of the acting variety show "I am an actor 3".
On stage, he was unwilling to fail and begged the director to give himself another chance. Offstage, he carefully folded the crew's costumes, and then received a call from his father.
He suppressed his emotions by wiping his face, and did not say much, but pretended to chat with his father easily: "They all praise me." Well, okay, it's okay, so be it. The moment he hung up the phone, he covered the camera with his hand, and tears were about to fall.
Actor Li Chengru's assessment of this performance is "accurate". Why is Zhang Songwen so "accurate"? Because this is Zhang Songwen's life.
In the first ten years of Zhang Songwen's career, he was extremely strapped for money, often without filming, and every evening he had to go to the vegetable market to buy leftovers to survive. But during that time, he rarely mentioned his hardship to his father.
In men's worldview, complaining means surrendering to life. So Zhang Songwen reached a "man's tacit understanding" with his father, who knew his hardships, and he knew that his father understood all this. However, as long as Zhang Songwen did not mention the predicament in front of him, his father would never ask.
For a long time, Zhang Songwen supported himself with a chicken soup: "Tomorrow will be better." ”
Once, Zhang Songwen ran 360 crew auditions a year, and most of them were rejected. At that time, he became more and more inferior and doubtful of himself.
Once, when an assistant director brought him into the starring lounge, he was at a loss but to fiddle with the neat drinks and greenery on the table. Someone came, and the footsteps startled him to jump up from his seat. The assistant director opened the door and asked him what was wrong, and he waved his hand awkwardly and said, "It's okay, it's okay." ”
Later, in the movie "Summer in the West River", the teaching director played by Zhang Songwen got the key to the vice principal's office and was allowed to work there.
He entered the office, did not dare to breathe, looked around nervously, sat down, and then reached out and moved the position of the green plants on the table.
Some people say that the experiences that Zhang Songwen uses to interpret characters are unbearable pains in his life. After all, Zhang Songwen's acting road was beaten all the way by life.
"This is not suitable for being an actor"
Zhang Songwen did not choose to be an actor at the beginning, and his experience in the industry is quite rich.
At the age of 16, he washed bottles in a soda factory, later installed air conditioners, worked as a hotel waiter, and worked as a tour guide. His days as a tour guide made him keen and knowledgeable, and he was later named "Excellent Tour Guide in Guangdong Province" for several consecutive years.
After working as a tour guide for 5 years, someone around him suddenly said that he was suitable for being an actor. He also happened to be interested in actors, and later was admitted to the Beijing Film Academy by mistake. He was 25 years old.
Slightly older than his classmates, he became the class leader and took his classmates to "do morning exercises" every day. By 12 midnight, he would practice his lines aloud on the playground.
However, even if you try, this older actor is still easy to overlook. He still remembers that when he was in college, the crew director went to the school to pick people, and his eyes slowly swept over his classmates, but when he swept him, he always suddenly accelerated.
Zhang Songwen in his youth.
After graduating from college, he stayed on as a teaching assistant for a meagre salary. In his spare time, he always runs the crew with his good buddies on Mondays, sometimes rejected, sometimes humiliated.
Once they went to the crew to hand in photos, and happened to meet the director and the coal boss talking about "who can be an actor", the director pointed to them and said: "Boss, you see, like these two can't be actors, such as this (Zhang Songwen), short as a dwarf." That (Monday wei), the mouth is like a sausage. The producer helped on the side: "You two hurry up and change careers, less detours." ”
The room was instantly filled with joyful laughter, especially Zhang Songwen and Zhou Weiwei laughed particularly loudly, and after laughing, they did not forget to respectfully say "thank you".
Coming out of the director's house, the two entered the elevator and stood for three or four minutes, and no one thought of pressing the floor.
Another time, while filming in the desert, he saw the wind and sand blowing the lunch boxes in the garbage bags everywhere, so he carried the large garbage bags to pick up the scattered lunch boxes. He picked up farther and farther, and when he turned around, he found that the actor's car had driven away.
Zhang Songwen called the crew and said, "Teacher, I'm still in the desert," and the crew told him, "You don't want to pick up garbage, you stay there and pick it up slowly." He could only say, "I won't pick it up, I won't pick it up".
In fact, Zhang Songwen's acting skills have always been well received by insiders, but whether it is hot or not depends on luck.
At that time, anyone in the circle who talked about Zhang Songwen praised "professionalism", but when money was mentioned, they would say that "artists don't talk about money".
Going to the market every day to buy leftovers was his experience during that time. Later, when he became famous, his father read about his son's experience in the media and said to his son: "I already knew that I wouldn't let you leave home." ”
Fortunately, everything persisted in exchange for good results. Zhang Songwen always likes to chase the director to ask all the details about the role before acting, and many directors are annoyed by him and let him "roll", but director Lou Ye likes this force.
Later, Zhang Songwen participated in many of Lou Ye's movies. In "A Cloud Made of Rain in the Wind", released in 2018, Zhang Songwen played a director of the Urban Construction Commission. The role brought him some traffic, and the courtyard he rented in the suburbs of Beijing finally "came lively."
In 2020, by starring in "Hidden Corner", Zhang Songwen was completely out of the circle, but the biggest hot search comments about him were "can't afford to buy a house". To this end, he specially sent a Weibo clarification, saying that in the second decade of entering the industry, although he did not make a fortune, he no longer had a hard time.
Before "Crazy", Zhang Songwen's description in the director's mouth was no longer "dwarf", but "this play has the participation of teacher Zhang Songwen". He served as a mentor in the acting variety show and was very gentle with any trainee: "You played the eccentricity of the character. "Welcome to join us as actors." "More than a dozen actors, I don't want to eliminate any of them."
No one knows better than Zhang Songwen that those actors who are still struggling are not without talent, but they have not yet waited for the opportunity.
Now he is like a torch, seeing some small flames, just like seeing himself back then. He believes that real actors, in time, will definitely come out.
Even if it is later, it will definitely be seen.
Part of the source: People, China Newsweek short documentary "Me and Another Me"
Director system: Lv Hong
Producer: Zhang Jiankui
Editor-in-chief: Xu Chenjing
Editor: Su Rui