Help from Hollywood
- Source: Global Times
- [10:19 July 19 2010]
- Comments
Wu Junmei. Photo: CFP
By Yao Fangqin
While applauding today's young and glamorous Chinese Hollywood celebrities, we should remember the efforts of the earlier generation who helped bridge the gap between the East and the West.
Wu Junmei, 44, known as Vivian Wu in the West, sees herself as anything but beautiful, but walking the city's old lanes in casual dress and light makeup, she epitomizes a Shanghainese woman's delicacy and style.
Along with a long career in international and Chinese film and television, she has started her own charity foundation to help disadvantaged Chinese students get a high school education.
On July 16, Wu formally announced the foundation's opening to the press in Shanghai. She showed up in the pouring rain to accompany 20 students on a visit to the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai.
Going Hollywood
The daughter of Lin Manfang, a famous Shanghainese actress, Wu started performing at 16. "My child-hood was spent mostly on film sets, watching the movie stars of the time," Wu said.
That's how she got her first acting job, in the Chinese film Forever Young. Soon afterwards, she got a role in the 1987 Academy Award winning movie, The Last Emperor.
At 20, the Shanghai Film Group Corp. wanted to sign her, but she refused and instead went to the US to continue studying and pursue her acting career.
"I prefer the unknown and unpredictable rather than a planned life," she said.
And so her international career began. Her most controversial role was in the 1996 film The Pillow Book. Wu portrayed a Japanese woman who enjoyed writing oriental calligraphy on naked human bodies. Wu fell in love with the role as soon as she read the script. Although she felt a bit awkward about the nude scenes, she won praise from eccentric director Peter Greenaway, who broke his tradition of working with actors only once and cast her in one of his later films.
She has gone on to have a successful Hollywood career and is one of the few Chinese members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group that votes on the Academy Awards each year.
