Janel Tsai Shu-Chen 蔡淑臻
Janel Tsai could walk a runway even in shoes that were hard to walk in, yet on her first shoots she spent a long time afraid of letting her colleagues down. She won her first Golden Bell on her fourth attempt, and the second for playing a rural surgeon in a series she herself helped get off the ground. By then, Tsai already knew what it was like to develop a project for years and wait for the money to come through.
By seventeen, Janel Tsai was already earning her own living. Born in Taiwan in 1975, in her youth she juggled her studies with work as a model. At first she was unsure whether to stay in the profession. What helped her decide was a model named Yao Chun-Yi performing at a show. Tsai saw that even on the catwalk you have to act: in a few seconds a model tells a story through movement and expression. She wanted to learn how to do that. On the catwalk, Tsai learned to hide from the audience what they were not supposed to see. Once she had to go out in shoes that were too tight and pretend she could walk in them comfortably. Later, when she began acting, it turned out that the habit of watching herself did not always help. A model, Tsai explained, has to know how to show herself off. An actress has to think about whom she is playing and sometimes forget entirely what she looks like from the outside. Tsai was used to holding her emotions in check in front of the camera, and in drama it was precisely this training that initially got in her way.
In the early 2000s she began getting roles on television. Tsai appeared in Friends (2003) and continued to combine acting with modeling. As she recalled in 2016, there were gaps between roles, big and small, and afterward she often felt she was starting from scratch again. Even after The Fierce Wife, more than a year passed before that feeling went away. Of the roles from that period, Tsai herself singled out her work in the series In Between (2012). Outside the fashion world, she became truly recognized after The Fierce Wife (2010), in which she played He Ai-Ling. The series brought her her first Golden Bell nomination. Tsai later said she couldn't even bring herself to watch it. On set she struggled for a long time with nerves, drank a lot of coffee, didn't sleep, and was afraid no one would ever cast her again. She found it hard to believe that the director and her co-stars were ready to help her. When a scene was about to be shot, her first thought was whether she was holding everyone else up.
On Crime Scene Investigation Center (2015), Tsai managed to break that habit. The director, Lai Meng-Jie, gave her freedom in her work, and she discovered that she could enjoy shooting. Tsai later said that it was with Lai that she understood how much an actor can bring to a role. The series earned her another nomination. While CSIC 2 (2019) was being shot, an old injury flared up. According to Tsai, in action-heavy scenes she demanded a great deal of herself, and the treatment she tried first only made things worse. For a time the pain was so severe that she had trouble walking. Later, while preparing for another series, she seriously thought she might have to leave the profession.
In 2020, Tsai was nominated for the Golden Bell for the fourth time. By her own count, she rehearsed her acceptance speech at home some eight hundred times. This time she really did have to go up on stage. She was honored for her role as Tang Juan in the series Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner (2019). By then Tsai had already been working for several years on a project about a surgeon at a rural hospital. About five years passed from the initial idea to the series' release. Among other things, they had to find funding. Tsai recalled that she found it hard to present before the committee, and criticism at such meetings threw her off for a long time. Support was eventually secured after a meeting she herself did not attend. Mad Doctor came out in 2022. Tsai played the lead, and in 2023 she received her second Golden Bell for it. She dedicated the award to those going through a difficult time.
She grew close to her long-term partner, actor Patrick Li, while they were already working on The Fierce Wife. In 2019, paparazzi published a photo of her hugging a doctor. The press took the picture as proof of an affair. Tsai explained that she had met the doctor who treated her mother after a fracture and had hugged him as a friend. It was around then that reports began saying she and Patrick had split. For a long time both gave the impression that they were still figuring out their relationship. They confirmed the breakup only in January 2020. According to Tsai, the decision had matured gradually, and they remained friends. At that point they were still living in the apartment they had bought together and were working out how to sell it and move out.
After that, Tsai lived alone for a while and said she treasured her freedom. She recalled that she used to move easily from one relationship to the next, but now she no longer felt she necessarily needed a partner. She did not regret the eight years with Li and said she blamed him for nothing. Friends introduced her to new people. She even downloaded a dating app but never finished registering: she did not know what photos and details about herself she could post if people might recognize her. In 2024, Tsai's agency confirmed that she was seeing someone whose work has nothing to do with publicity. The following year the actress said they lived apart, though they sometimes stayed at each other's places. She said their views were similar but their domestic habits different. For her fiftieth birthday he sent her flowers that did not survive the journey and gave her a scarf. She also recounted how she had taught him to fold clothes. In 2026, Tsai said they had not yet met each other's parents and that the question of marriage was secondary for her: what mattered more was how they lived together.
In cinema, Tsai at this time played Sufeng in Left-Handed Girl (2025) by Zou Shi-Qing. The director had been returning to this idea for more than twenty years. Sean Baker helped her with the script and editing and was also one of the producers. The shoot itself took thirty-five days. Tsai said she immediately wanted to see this story on screen. It seemed to her that female viewers might recognize someone among Sufeng's relatives or neighbors. Left-Handed Girl was chosen to represent Taiwan in the selection for the Oscar for Best International Feature Film, and Tsai was nominated for a Golden Horse as a supporting actress for this work. The award went to another actress. Early the following year, Tsai said that this time she had handled the disappointment better than before, when any setback had long undermined her self-confidence.
