Zhu Yilong, who worked hard in vain

"Disappearing Her" is still dominating the mainland film market, and starring Zhu Yilong is about to become the next 10 billion box office Mr.

In the group of domestic male actors, the role played by Zhu Yilong is difficult to define: if you talk about the ability to resist the box office, there are many tens of billions of box office actors, tough guys and national comedy male gods are in front, Zhu Yilong and they take different paths; If it is about strength, he won the Golden Rooster Award for Best Actor not long ago, but he will still be recognized as an idol because of his appearance and huge fan base.

At the beginning of his debut, Zhu Yilong worked very hard. He has acted in more than thirty plays, but he is still unknown. Finally, it exploded in 2018 with "Soul Town". After that, he began to focus on film, and five years later there were already works such as "Life Events", "Disappearing Her" and "Mistake by the River".

"Soul Town", "Life Events", "Disappearing Her", "Mistakes by the River"

After working hard and working hard, Zhu Yilong was not busy in vain after all. In addition to becoming famous, he has almost completed the transformation of idols to strength. Looking back after getting the results, is it accidental or inevitable?

Filming first, then talking about something else

In public reports, Zhu Yilong has never considered himself a particularly talented actor. "It's not like some people who come out and you feel that his rhythm is very special and very spiritual, but no one has said this when I first came out, so I think I should not be very special."

Like many actors from professional classes, Zhu Yilong was interested in stage plays at that time, often wrote his own scripts, and then moved to the stage to perform, enjoying the reaction of the stage and the audience. Classmates went out to run groups and look for opportunities during school, and Zhu Yilong did the same.

It's just that the fledgling, rookie actors don't have the right to choose - in 2009, Zhu Yilong, who had not yet graduated, began acting in digital movies. The "People" report mentioned that he filmed one in about ten days, and most of the students in the acting department went to act, but when he graduated, only Zhu Yilong signed the company that made digital films - those digital movies, in fact, were only broadcast on TV as auxiliary content of "Wang Gang Tells Stories".    

He himself knew that those works could not make him famous and rich, but he still chose to continue shooting. Looking back later, I can call that period "charging" - just to have the opportunity to try different acting styles from different roles and practice my performance. Zhu Yilong once said in an interview that it was after becoming famous that everyone would say that his image was not bad, but no one would tell him at that time, "You have a good image, your play is also good, you wait for us to cooperate later."

In the first stage of becoming an actor, Zhu Yilong's choice was to film first and then talk about something else. Open his work resume, you can see that in the decade before the explosion in 2018, he participated in 13 TV series and 38 movies, of which most of them were silent and even difficult to find viewing channels, except for several works such as "New Border City Prodigal Son" and "The Legend of Miyue" that can bring a little splash to his career.

Zhu Yilong "The Legend of Miyue"

As an actor, when he first debuted, he also thought about winning various awards and being recognized in the future, but the time had not come, so he could only wait while shooting, waiting for the day when he could seize the opportunity and show off his previous performance accumulation, and it is precisely because of this that he can "endure making small movies and various roles every day".

But the performance of "walking" and the belief in fame can not become a long-term support for an actor, Zhu Yilong once said in an interview that after acting for a period of time and finding that the state of the performance has not changed, he will begin to doubt himself, what kind of changes he will want to make, how to continue to go down.

Change happened quickly. In the summer of 2018, it seems that overnight, Zhu Yilong came to the front of the stage and became famous.

Fame is in sight

In 2016, although "Addiction" was removed before it was finished, it really made the two leading actors Huang Jingyu and Xu Weizhou suddenly become popular.

When deciding to star in "Soul Town", Zhu Yilong gave the reason that "I have not been exposed to magical dramas before, and this time I want to play three roles by one person, among which there are two characters with particularly large contrasts, which I think are challenging and interesting." It is impossible to guess whether he was inspired by the explosion of "Addiction", but it is indeed in line with Zhu Yilong's consistent style of "you can try to act no matter what genre" in his previous acting career.

Zhu Yilong "Soul Town"

This test, so that Zhu Yilong, who was standing for a long time, finally became famous. In the public report, he was also caught off guard by the sudden arrival of popularity and popularity: "Because I have been filming all along, I never thought that a play would have such a big repercussion." ”

Previously, Zhu Yilong had been busy filming, a huge number, although he did not receive widespread recognition and attention, but he still thought "with these works, there is a chance for the director to see, and there is a chance for the director to say that you can't."

After "Soul Town", Zhu Yilong can gradually grasp the choice. And what he originally wanted to do may be difficult to find in the TV series. Characters such as "Wu Xie" after "Town Soul", Qi Heng in "Do You Know" and Lin Nansheng in "Rebel" are not the destinations that Zhu Yilong wants to go.

"Do You Know" Qi Heng "Rebel" Lin Nansheng

In 2019, due to brand sponsorship, Zhu Yilong went to the Cannes Film Festival, walked the red carpet, and after returning, he and the team said: "I still want to act in movies." ”

Powerful, shave your head first

In June 2021, "Rebel" was launched, when Zhu Yilong was filming "Life Events", and he shaved his hair before filming - many actors have tried to use this explicit way to change their past images to declare their ambitions to go to the acting school, and Zhu Yilong is not the first.

Hairstyling is the first step, and the second step is speaking in tongues. The dialect in domestic movies often assumes important functions, and "Life Events" is no exception, in this Wuhan dialect film, Wuhan native Zhu Yilong expresses it in his "mother tongue", and the fit for the role is high. And the hairstyle and language can only be shaped into half of the "third brother", and the other half still has to be completed by performance.

Zhu Yilong "Life Events"

As for Zhu Yilong's performance in "Life Events", perhaps more intuitive in addition to audience evaluation and box office results, it is that this role and film won him the Golden Rooster Award for Best Actor - of course, the award is not the only standard to measure how an actor's acting skills, but the certification and blessing of the award are mostly what the actor wants, and after waiting for more than ten years, Zhu Yilong got it.

It's just that returning to the choice itself, unlike the previous situation of taking on TV series and not knowing whether it can be popular, an actor who is considered to be a traffic brave the big screen and plays a role that is completely different from his original image, which is indeed more challenging. It is precisely because of this challenge that the possibility of being recognized is also greater - this is also the path that many traffic stars and idols have tried.

Coupled with the fact that the theme of "Life Events" itself has social emotions, Zhu Yilong can also realize that this is a movie that will move the audience. In an interview with "People", Zhu Yilong said that a funeral scene made the group actors red-eyed, and he himself got goosebumps, "I think this is the movie I want to find, this theme, I think it will definitely bring some comfort to the audience and bring some warmth." ”

The image breakthrough, the theme is moving, and Zhu Yilong, who starred in "Life Events", made the right decision. At that stage, like many actors who came from delayed dramas and had a large number of fans, he had an urgent need for transformation and production, and "Life Events" was only the first step.

Wei Shujun, the director of "Mistake by the River", has been seen by Cannes since the beginning of the short film, and has been shortlisted for Cannes several times, and this time the starring role of the work is Zhu Yilong. In an interview with The Paper, Wei Shujun said that the day after Zhu Yilong won the Golden Rooster Award for Best Actor, he went to Jiangxi Nanfeng, where the film was filmed. "He hasn't made an authorial film like this, or it's a very different film for him, and he's looking forward to what tricks I'll have to 'train' him."

Zhu Yilong "Mistakes by the River"

But Wei Shujun just asked the local police to take Zhu Yilong to solve the case, talk to the old public security police about the past case-solving experience, let him practice shooting guns and catch thieves, and wander on the road in clothes from the nineties. "In fact, it is not how to let him get exactly what kind of training, but let him live a simple life that is different from that of Rong Ma Qiao."

Some media people who have seen "The Mistake by the River" believe that Zhu Yilong is still performing in the paradigm, and some say that his performance makes people forget that it is Zhu Yilong. But no matter what, he finally achieved his goal four years ago with this work - from his first trip to Cannes in 2019 to this year's Cannes Film Festival, four years later, Zhu Yilong finally walked the Cannes red carpet with his work.

On the other side of the starring author's film and walking the Cannes red carpet, the commercial film "Disappearing Her" starring Zhu Yilong is moving towards 3 billion at the box office.

Zhu Yilong "Disappearing Her"

At the same time as the box office is soaring, the film's word-of-mouth controversy is also not small, feminism is dissatisfied with the "male condensation" in the film, and also believes that Li Muzi's role is a dwarfing of men to women, and men, that is, He Fei played by Zhu Yilong, assume the topic function of being scolded scumbags - the more the audience hates He Fei, the higher the box office of the film.

Perhaps this is something that even the starring Zhu Yilong could not have predicted, but such a commercial movie is undoubtedly one of the best opportunities to promote him to become the next ten billion box office actor.

After fifteen years of actor career, Zhu Yilong is finally likely to become an idol powerhouse with both box office and word-of-mouth gains. It's just that idols and strength have walls after all, and for a long time, Zhu Yilong may not be able to stop those efforts that can prove his strength.