Janine Chang Chun-Ning 张钧宁, 张钧宁
Janine Chang spent seven years juggling filming with a master's degree in law. In Taiwan she became known for The Hospital, while on the mainland she played Hailan in Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace. With The Abandoned, Chang returned to Taiwanese cinema, playing a police officer grieving her husband's death and taking on producing work for the first time.
Janine Chang was born in Germany in 1982 and grew up in Taiwan. As a young woman she planned to study law and then perhaps teach. When her first roles came along, she did not give up her studies and for years kept arranging them around her shooting schedule. Chang recalled that she was shy, was used to wearing glasses and did not immediately get used to being recognized in public. She became known for The Hospital (2006). It took her seven years to finish her master's degree. Years later, her thesis became a topic of conversation for a very different reason. In 2021, because of the words in its title, people online began attributing political views to Chang. Chang and her studio issued a denial. The thesis, which she had once finished in the breaks between shoots, was discussed by people who knew neither its contents nor how it had come about.
In Taiwan, Chang worked a great deal with Doze Niu Cheng-Tse. He cast her in Wayward Kenting and later in What on Earth Have I Done Wrong?!. Chang was also asked about what relationship she and Niu had off set. In 2012 she said they were friends and that she found it hard to imagine a romance with someone in the same profession. In her free time Chang gladly travelled. She recalled going with her sister to Germany, where she studied the language, and how they once nearly had to spend the night by the station. Later she travelled with World Vision to Mongolia and spoke about a girl she met there. Her habit of spending long stretches on the road served her well in her work too. In the years that followed she was no longer shooting only in Taiwan.
In The Advisors Alliance Chang played Zhang Chunhua, Sima Yi's wife. She had to show that in the struggle for power the Sima Yi family had interests of its own and that his wife knew how to defend them even where formally nothing depended on her. In Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace she was given the role of Hailan, who at first keeps quiet and counts on Ruyi's support. Over the years at court she has to find ways to protect her friend herself. Chang said she was especially interested in playing scenes in which a heroine from another era goes through what is familiar to women today. Preparing for the childbirth scenes, she asked those who knew from their own experience which details are usually left out. Shooting such series took many months. The actress could trace how the relationship between the two women changed from conversation to conversation, long before the climax.
Chang took on The Abandoned as a producer as well. At the centre of the story is the police officer Wu Jie, who has lost her husband. At the start of the film she is barely holding herself together when she has to investigate a woman's death. Chang invited Ethan Juan Ching-Tien to play a man familiar with the world of migrant workers who comes under suspicion. The director was Zeng Ying-Ting. Together with him Chang thought in advance about what Wu Jie's family life might have been like. They came up with several episodes of which only traces remained in the film, in the heroine's apartment. For the photographs the crew really did go out into nature and celebrate a birthday. It was easier for Chang to play a woman who had suffered a loss once she had at least a few memories of a person who is no longer on screen.
On set she simultaneously kept an eye on the crew's work and played her role. One scene took several days to shoot and refine, and during another, when safety glass was being smashed, Chang suffered a hairline fracture. She said that with her producer duties she had to think about the whole crew's work even when she herself wanted to do one more take. Yet it was on this film that she was for the first time able to decide, together with others, from the very beginning who would play opposite her and how to shoot this story with the means available. The picture was shown at international festivals and was released in Taiwan cinemas.
In The Outlaw Doctor, Chang plays the neurosurgeon Zheng Wan-Ping. Her character treats children and meets a doctor from Vietnam who works in Taiwan without a permit and takes on those who struggle to get into a hospital. In one episode, the characters have to deliver a baby in a mountain shack. Chang said in 2025 that on location even the crew lacked the most ordinary comforts, let alone the equipment her character uses in the clinic. Here she again drew on her attention to how a person acts in such circumstances. In a script, that can take a single line, but on set you have to find the precise movements.
