Chen Xiao 陈晓
Chen Xiao rose to fame on Chinese television, where he was initially cast eagerly as princes and wuxia heroes. In Romance of the Condor Heroes he played Yang Guo, while in the series Nothing Gold Can Stay he was given the role of a merchant's spoiled son who had to grow up before the audience's eyes. Chen appeared on film less often. For his role as a young soldier in The Taking of Tiger Mountain by Tsui Hark, he was nominated for the Hundred Flowers Award. And in the summer of 2022, audiences saw him in two very different roles at once. In A Dream of Splendor he was a formidable official at the Song court, while in the police series Being A Hero he played a gaunt, stubble-covered loner searching for his father's killers.
Chen Xiao was born on July 5, 1987, in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province, into a family of civil servants. His father had trained as a doctor, and, as Chen recalled, medicine was often discussed at home. As a child, he himself thought he would follow in his father's footsteps. In primary school, he was spotted during calligraphy classes at the local Palace of Young Pioneers and was cast in the children's series Song of Our Class (我们班的歌, 1997). Director Zhang Jindi advised the boy to apply to the Central Academy of Drama in the future. His parents believed that filming would interfere with his studies and turned down subsequent offers. When the time came to choose a profession, Chen prepared for the creative exams, including at preparatory courses, and passed the selection at three universities at once. He chose the academy in Beijing.
In the dormitory, Chen kept a small DVD player by his bed and, by his own account, spent most of his pocket money on discs. When he graduated from the academy in 2009, his parents hoped he would return to Anhui to teach. Chen did indeed teach there at preparatory courses. He signed a contract with Huayi Brothers and began going to auditions. Among his early works were the series Kong Zi, in which he played Song Chao, and Tsui Hark's Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, released in 2010, where he got a small role as Lu Li, the state preceptor. According to Chen, his first fans appeared after the TV comedy Happy Mother-in-law, Pretty Daughter-in-law. Chen himself contacted its producer Yu Zheng via Weibo and eventually moved to his studio.
At Yu Zheng's, he was initially given supporting roles, including that of Prince Yin Si in Gong Suo Zhu Lian (2012). In 2013, in the series Swordsman, based on a novel by Jin Yong, Chen played Lin Pingzhi, a young man whom revenge for his murdered family gradually turns into someone capable of any cruelty. He considered this role the most successful of his work at the time. And in Female Prime Minister, he was entrusted with the male lead for the first time. His Gao Zhan, the future emperor of the Northern Qi, helps the heroine Zhao Li-Ying hold her own at court. Chen said that it was above all Gao Zhan himself whom viewers fell in love with, a character the writers gave almost every virtue of an ideal groom. That same year, Yu Zheng also invited him to the feature film The Palace, where he played another Qing prince, Yin Xiang, opposite Zhou Dong-Yu.
When Yu Zheng took on Romance of the Condor Heroes (2014), Chen suggested inviting Taiwanese actress Michelle Chen Yan-Si to play Xiao Long-Nu. The first photos from the set sparked debate over whether she was suited to the role. Chen defended his co-star in an interview with Phoenix and recounted that within the first days she had mastered wire somersaults and performed a stunt herself that a double could have done. Chen himself spent whole days in a safety harness and even ate lunch in it. Because of the costume, taking it off and putting it back on took a lot of time. To some viewers, his Yang Guo seemed too carefree. Chen explained that behind the jokes his character hides his feelings and talks himself into holding on.
In December 2014, The Taking of Tiger Mountain was released in cinemas. Tsui Hark directed the war story with the same sweep with which he had once made wuxia. Chen got a small role as Gao Bo, a young soldier in a reconnaissance unit. After the film's release, the director praised Chen for the warmth he brought to his character and said that next time he would like to cast him in a comedy. In 2016, this role earned Chen a nomination for the Hundred Flowers Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Ding Hei remembered Chen from his small role as Mi Yan in The Qin Empire 2 (2013). Several years later he called the actor himself and offered him the part of Shen Xingyi in Nothing Gold Can Stay (2017). Chen knew how Ding Hei worked. Even for a close-up he might demand that the whole scene be played from beginning to end, and if anyone slipped up, they would start over. At first Shen Xingyi behaves like a spoiled boy used to getting whatever he wants. It takes him time to understand what he feels for Zhou Ying, the heroine played by Betty Sun. It was precisely this belated understanding that Chen called the most interesting thing about the role. He told The Paper that on set he felt like a student again. The moment he stepped out of the makeup room, he would start discussing the character with the director, and they would run through the scenes together in the room beforehand.
In 2020, in Healer Of Children, Chen played a doctor for the first time. Before shooting he went on rounds with doctors and sat in on their conversations with patients' parents. In Tu Wei (2021) Chen is hard to recognize as a prickly journalist with a short buzz cut and stubble.
In Being A Hero Chen played Wu Zhenfeng, who tries to find out which of the drug dealers killed his father. For this role he grew out his hair and beard and lost about ten kilograms over two months of training. When his family came to the set, according to Chen, at first they didn't recognize him. One of the fights was shot in a narrow corridor in a single take. Three cameramen passed the camera from hand to hand while lying on top of the cabinets, and by the end of the shooting day the actor could barely stand. The series came out in August 2022, soon after A Dream of Splendor, where Chen played Gu Qianfan, an officer of the palace service reputed to be ruthless. In the scenes with the tea-house owner played by Liu Yi-Fei, this cold man gradually thaws. According to Chen, his co-star was so natural in the role from the very first day that it was easier for him to settle in too.
In The Road of Life (2023), partly based on Lu Yao's novella Life, Chen played Gao Jialin, a village lad who dreams of breaking away to the city and is ready to hurt those close to him for the sake of it. Director Yan Jian-Gang liked the freshness of the first takes and shot with several cameras at once to catch the actors' first reactions. Chen especially remembered the scene where his character wheels a bicycle loaded with buns for sale and is too ashamed to look up at his former classmates. That same year, in Thirteen Years of Dust, he played the detective Lu Xingzhi at the start of his career and thirteen years later, and in The Ingenious One he returned to wuxia. Yun Xiang can anticipate other people's moves and set traps, while his companions wield the sword for him.
In 2025 came The Big Merchant (大生意人), where Chen played Gu Pingyuan, a scholar exiled to Ningguta who rises to become a merchant and makes his fortune trading tea. Chen, who grew up in Anhui province, had known the nickname of the local merchants since childhood – "Huizhou camels." They were called that for their patience and endurance. The first scene was shot in snowy Yichun. Chen had to gallop across a frozen river and look back as he rode. He said he was a little afraid of riding, but he remembered well how the snow flew up from under the hooves. In total, by Chen's count, he had between seven hundred and eight hundred scenes. When Chen lost the thread, director Zhang Ting reminded him that Gu wants only one thing from the very beginning – to go home.
He met Michelle Chen in 2013, while shooting Romance of the Condor Heroes. As they told Taiwan's Vogue, they began dating only after filming wrapped, when they saw each other again at promotional events for the series. In August 2015 both announced their romance, and that autumn Chen Xiao proposed aboard a small boat on the Seine in Paris. The ring was hidden under a cloche, and when Chen was already on one knee before Michelle, she was shown a figurine of Xiao Long-Nu. They registered their marriage in Hefei on July 5, 2016, Chen's birthday. On July 19 they held their wedding by Yanqi Lake near Beijing, and on December 20 their son was born.
On June 19, 2024, tabloid reporter Jiang Xiaoyan claimed that the couple had been living apart for several months and that Chen himself had brought up divorce. At the time the pair left the reports unanswered. On February 18, 2025, they simultaneously announced their divorce on Weibo and said they would raise their son together. The same day, Michelle Chen's studio called for an end to the spread of false reports and referred to the couple's statement. In April 2026, Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao quoted Chen's representatives responding to a rumor that he had missed the funeral of his former father-in-law. According to them, there was no public memorial service after Michelle's father died. In August 2026, Michelle Chen spoke about the divorce on Mango TV. She admitted she still had regrets and said she was not planning to marry again for now.
