Zhu Yilong: I like to feel the real life

(Zhu Yilong, born in Wuhan in 1988, Chinese mainland actor, graduated from the Beijing Film Academy with a bachelor's degree in acting in 2006.) ）

Reasons for awarding

He is a rare young actor at the moment, with an outstanding handsome appearance and continuous improvement of his acting skills; the roles he portrays span ancient costumes and modern times, with both lightness and depth. He has a youthful spirit and a gentleman's atmosphere; he has a huge fan base, but he is not engulfed by traffic. He has always had a reverence for performance and unremitting pursuit, and he also refuses to let a single label define himself, and strives to make himself rich and diverse.

Performing Arts Person of the Year 2020

Zhu Yilong: I like to feel the real life

Reporter/Li Jing

Published in China News Weekly, No. 976 on December 14, 2020

Since graduating from the Beijing Film Academy in 2010, Zhu Yilong has officially entered the industry for a full decade. He still can't skillfully cope with too much noise and attention, and he will not take the initiative to create "topics", always appearing in the sight of everyone with a quiet and humble and slightly shy and restrained appearance, although he is already the "top stream" in the media.

He cherishes the more opportunities and choices brought by the flow to him, and he can also hold a normal heart for the resulting criticism, after all, "no one can avoid being discussed", what he wants, he has long wanted to understand. "Draw energy from life, and then try to create more characters without repetition, so as to bring good characters and good works to everyone." Zhu Yilong told China News Weekly.

Since he chose to be an actor, he believes that whether it is time or the audience, he will not fail a person who works hard.

"When I was a kid, I was very close"

Zhu Yilong did not know why, after growing up, his personality changed, "my mother said, when I was a child, the words were still quite dense", but since he can remember things clearly, he feels that he is a child with rich psychological activities, but he is not too revealing, and he does not show his desire and does not want to attract the attention of others.

When he went to school, he was never the kind of student who actively raised his hand to answer questions. He explains: "It's not that I don't want to answer, and a lot of times I think about it, but I think I have to think about it, think through the whole problem-solving process, and then raise my hand after I'm ready." But when I was about to raise my hand, everyone else was done answering. ”

Zhu Yilong was born in April 1988 in Wuhan, Hubei Province. Like many children, he had a "piano childhood." From the age of 4 and a half, the "chore" of practicing the piano followed him until he was about to graduate from elementary school. Every day at noon, in order to ensure that he arrived at home to practice the piano within the time set by his mother, he had to run back, practice the piano at home first, and continue practicing after lunch until he had to go out for afternoon classes. Practice before writing homework in the evening, and ensure 3 hours a day.

In order to avoid practicing, he also came up with ghost ideas. Halfway through the practice he said, "I want to go to the bathroom." "Then I stayed in the toilet for half an hour, grinding and rubbing for half a day before I came out, and the result was naturally a beating."

Although he felt tortured, but the long-term insistence on practicing the piano still laid a solid foundation for him and a good artistic feeling, coupled with good looks, Zhu Yilong was selected by the teacher to perform short plays when he was in elementary school, and had his first "actor" experience. Zhu Yilong still remembers that he and two other children performed the story of "Three Monks", and his mother cut the stockings for him to put on his head to make a bald head effect. They not only perform in schools, but also go to factories and other off-campus units to perform, "It's very fun, so many people at the bottom are watching." He recalled. Fun is fun, Zhu Yilong did not like acting because of this, and he did not expect to be admitted to the Beijing Film Academy with the encouragement of his mother many years later, and officially embarked on the road of acting.

In 2006, the acting department of the Beijing Film Academy recruited only 19 students, including Zhu Yilong, a fresh graduate from an ordinary high school who had no acting experience. His class teacher, Cui Xinqin, once said that he liked Zhu Yilong because although he was a "blank piece of paper", he had great potential.

As a "blank piece of paper", studying with many students from art schools, and then entering the vanity fair of the show business circle, how many difficulties can be imagined. But now he mentions these things again, just light and breezy, and he always carries the kind of "gentleness and firmness" that fans praise most.

The cultivation of character still dates back to childhood. In Zhu Yilong's memory, as soon as it snowed when he was a child, his father called him to exercise in the snow together, and the father and son chatted while exercising, ran and jumped in a big circle, and then took off their shirts to take a group photo.

The exercise of the will did not stop there, and when he was 9 years old, his parents enrolled him in summer camp and visited North Korea with a group of children from art schools. Afraid that he would not be able to manage the money alone, dad bought him a pair of underwear with a zippered pocket and stuffed hundreds of dollars in the panties. When he returned to China, Zhu Yilong only spent more than ten yuan, not for himself, but bought souvenirs such as massage pounds, commemorative coins, and small porcelain tigers as gifts to his family.

From the heart, for the sake of others, this meticulousness continues to this day. Before the interview began, Zhu Yilong first asked the reporter whether he wanted to wear a mask, he was worried that his small cold would infect others. Attending events, sometimes it is inconvenient to catch up with fans to sign, he will offer to mail the signature to the other party, and will definitely fulfill his promise. A fan said on Weibo that he had forgotten about signing the photo, but he received a mail from Zhu Yilong one day.

Once a fan with the screen name "Don't be African" came to ask for an autograph, hoping that he would write his name, Zhu Yilong thought about it after writing it, and then added a sentence "Africans are very good!" "Then I signed my name.

People who sell sweet potatoes

Students who have just entered the acting department must first "liberate their nature", that is, through some exaggerated and ugly performances, they will get rid of all the shyness and baggage on their bodies. Zhu Yilong is no exception, he clearly remembers the first acting class, the teacher let everyone go on stage, put on their own ugliest appearance, and asked the teacher to feel ugly enough to come down. Many students came from art schools, and even some had experience in filming, they played beggars, clowns, and gorillas, at that time Zhu Yilong had no concept of acting, did not know what to do, and could only make a grimace.

Gradually, the classmates all passed the stage and stepped down, leaving only himself on the stage. The teacher said, "As long as your classmates think it's ugly enough, you can come down." Zhu Yilong still only played a grimace, and the classmates all felt sorry for him and said: "Ugly enough, ugly enough." Zhu Yilong was able to get off the stage.

From an ordinary middle school to an acting department, Zhu Yilong's biggest difficulty is shyness, "it is actually quite difficult to perform in full view of everyone and show the joys and sorrows on the stage." Cui Xinqin seemed to see his lack of confidence, and the first midterm exam of the first semester gave him a very high score. This score greatly encouraged Zhu Yilong, making him suddenly feel that "although he has not studied, but maybe he has a little talent", in the following days, naturally more courageous to express himself and devote himself to the role.

And he found that once he was committed, he was no longer shy. "When you go on stage, you are not you at that time, you are another person, you are a character, you are part of this story, then you don't need to care about other people's eyes." 」

In order to show the characters more realistically, Zhu Yilong went out with his classmates to observe life, vegetable markets, supermarkets, bus stops on weekends... Look for a crowded place, pay attention to the state of various characters, and prepare for homework. At first, he couldn't figure out what he needed to observe, which was often clumsy.

At one point, he prepared a job as "a man selling baked sweet potatoes." For the sake of authenticity, he rented out the whole vat of baked sweet potatoes and found someone to carry it into the classroom, and the teachers and classmates were stunned. During the performance, Zhu Yilong stared at the rented stall, watched motionlessly, watched for a while, and said: "Teacher, my program is finished." Cui Xinqin said that this is not a person who sells baked sweet potatoes, "You play this is a person who watches baked sweet potatoes." Cui Xinqin also remembers this past of more than ten years ago, at the "Reading Ceremony" at the beginning of the year, she said that although she was a little speechless about Zhu Yilong's childish performance at that time, "his serious attitude and down-to-earth attitude made me very moved." ”

After that, Zhu Yilong found more and more the feeling of acting, and when he performed again, he no longer grasped the external form, but the characteristics of the characters: physical characteristics, speaking style, personal habits... Now in Zhu Yilong's eyes, even ordinary people have characteristics, "even if it is just a sweet potato seller, one person and another person will not be the same."

After the graduation drama in the third year, Zhu Yilong began to run the group to take over the play. Newcomers without fame naturally start with the smallest roles, he has played a dragon set with only one line, and he has also acted in a digital movie with a shooting cycle of only 10 days and broadcast at midnight. From shangjia warlords to weak scholars and even mountain village savages, he took on any role and did his best to play. In these early film and television dramas, no matter how much he played and whose role he played, as long as he appeared in the camera, his sincerity could be seen.

Zhu Yilong believes that no matter what the subject matter, people's emotions are always connected, as long as the emotional logic of the characters is smoothed out in the play, each scene thinks clearly "What to do?" Why? How? These few elements establish a sense of belief that even if the plot is far from the audience's life, the audience will trust the character.

Actors are also ordinary people

The turning point appeared in 2018's "Town Soul", Zhu Yilong played three roles - the gentle and elegant Professor Shen Wei of Longcheng University, the shrewd and domineering black robe and the biggest villain in the film, Ye Zun, three characters with different personalities let the audience remember Zhu Yilong's name at once. From June to July, when the series was broadcast, he won the first place in the list of TV drama actors in the Artist New Media Index for 34 consecutive days.

After the explosion, in December of that year, the popular drama "Do you know if it should be green fat red skinny" was broadcast, zhu Yilong played the affectionate and elegant little grandfather Qi Heng, who was described by the audience as "every time it appears like a breeze blowing from the mountains". In the first quarter of 2019, Ai Man statistics showed that Zhu Yilong's commercial value list and active fan list ranked first.

20 years old began filming, 30 years old to really become famous, fans said that he ten years to grind a sword, he himself feels that it is not too late to be red, with the past 10 years to prepare for popularity is not long, popularity these things have not really changed him, he does not feel that he is noble, still fully devoted to the role.

As part of the classic IP "Notes from the Tomb Robber", the "Restart of the Extreme Sea Listening to Thunder" broadcast this summer has carried the scrutiny and expectations of all walks of life from the beginning of filming. Zhu Yilong, who played the middle-aged Wu Evil, not only read the "Tomb Robber Notes Restart", but also carefully studied the "Tomb Robber Notes" canon. "Restart" director Pan Anzi said in an interview that Zhu Yilong did a lot of details for the character during the filming process, such as his insistence on adding a scar to his neck, which was to continue with the experience of Wu Xie who had been cut throat in "Sand Sea". Sometimes, the staff reminded that "the turtleneck clothes worn today cannot be seen", but he still insisted that some viewers would see it, and even if it was not seen, the scar was also part of Wu Evil.

At the beginning of the film, Wu Xie is asserted by the doctor that his life is short, and he draws a match in the dark night and watches it burn to ashes, which makes the audience very moved. Zhao Liuyi, one of the screenwriters, revealed on Weibo that this is also proposed and designed by Zhu Yilong himself, which is a figurative expression of the passage of Wu Evil's life.

But in the past two years, Zhu Yilong has been less and less deliberate design details, he feels that this is a natural process, he has become more relaxed, the state of the characters in the script is more smooth, filming is more and more of a enjoyment, "it has become a part of my life."

Zhu Yilong likes to play "Joker" Heath Ledger in "Batman: The Dark Knight", and Zhu Yilong himself has played "Joker" in the variety show "City of Illusion", he likes that actors can burst out of powerful energy in the role, and life is such a self. He is also essentially a person of self, such as not good at talking, not good at communication, perhaps a weakness in this lively circle, but he is not going to fight against his own character. "Actors are actually ordinary people," Zhu Yilong said, "everyone has their own personality, their own way of doing things, everyone to play themselves - a variety of different colorful characters, in order to form a good play." ”

Outside of the play, he envies being able to travel around the world in a motorhome, staying in whichever village he parks in, where he can live. Zhu Yilong also likes to live in a place authentically, to feel the living conditions of that place. But now he does not have this time, and now the most able to let him relax completely, in addition to the basketball he loved from childhood to adulthood, is diving. "I especially like the sea, under the sea you will find that it is a completely different world, and under the water people have no gravity, everything around them is very slow, quiet and free." 」

(Interns Xu Ying and Cao Yuyue also contributed to this article)