Chang Chen, chair of the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee and last year’s Golden Horse best leading actor winner for “Lucky Lu,” advised six of Taiwan’s rising performers on working across different film sets at a Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) showcase in Taipei.
The “TCCF x The Golden Horse Awards: Taiwan Emerging Actors Showcase” featured Bai Xiao-ying, Ho Man-xi, Rosen, Jimmy Liu, Ma Shih-yuan and Lin Yi-ting. All are nominees or winners of Best New Performer at the Golden Horse Awards, Taiwan’s top honors for Chinese-language cinema. The event aimed to connect performers with international creative teams, investors and media.
The lineup drew from two consecutive Golden Horse Awards cycles. Bai and Ho are nominees for this year’s Best New Performer award for “Girl” and “Sunshine Women’s Choir,” respectively. Ma won the award last year for “Left-Handed Girl,” while Rosen, Liu and Lin were nominated for “Marching Boys,” “Blind Love” and “A Dance With Rainbows,” respectively.
Bai, who began acting at 6, is now a university student studying film. She greeted the audience in Mandarin and Japanese and said she had trained in traditional Chinese martial arts for a decade. Ho, who described herself as slow to warm up, serious and full of contrasts, drew on her extensive dance training; she hopes to take on a suspense action film or other physically forceful roles.
Liu said he had practiced taekwondo for seven years. “At this stage, I feel it’s more important to light up others than to light up myself,” Lin said.
Ma said acting helps her find an outlet for pressure. “When you give yourself completely to a role, audiences can feel your sincerity,” she said. “It can give others strength and help you understand yourself better.”
Rosen spoke about his love of nature and how acting gives him the chance to pick up new skills for each role. While preparing for one project, he learned Western fencing and later entered a competition, where he won a bout.
Asked what roles they hoped to try next, Bai, Ma and Liu said they wanted to break away from familiar casting and try comedy or villains.
Chang praised the six performers. “Actors have to be like water, changing shape to fit the vessel,” he said. Asked about international productions, he said each set has its own atmosphere, whether led by Wong Kar-wai or Hou Hsiao-hsien. Actors, he added, need to understand how much room each director and production team gives them.
“Ang Lee once told me that actors should read autobiographies of people with different personalities. Our job is to inhabit the lives of many different characters through our performances,” Chang said. “Taipei may not have Hollywood’s industry ecosystem, but we’re working in a place we know, and that can help us do our best work.”
