Wen Zhang 文章
Wen Zhang first made his name on television, playing young men who had to rent flats, look for work and learn to live as married couples. In cinema he was given very different roles. In Ocean Paradise he played a young man with autism and learned to swim especially for the shoot, while in Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, directed by Stephen Chow Sing-Chi, he played a hapless demon tamer. The success of Little Daddy, which Wen directed himself, allowed him to carry on filmmaking. For his first feature-length picture, When Larry Met Mary, he received a Golden Rooster.
Wen Zhang was born on June 26, 1984, in Xi'an and grew up in the southern part of the city in a family of civil servants. He got into film while still at school: one day the principal brought a director from the Xi'an Film Studio to a class. The director was looking for a teenager for the series Qing Chun Zheng Dian (2000). For the shoot Wen received eight hundred yuan. According to his family, he bought his mother a watch, his father shoes, his teacher a Peking duck, and gave the rest of the money to his parents. In 2002 Wen enrolled in the acting department of the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing and graduated four years later. Among his classmates was Bai Baihe, who would later become his partner in one of his best-known films.
Even as a student Wen was acting on television. In 2005, on the set of Jin Yi Wei, he met the actress Ma Yi-Li. Soon both appeared in Zhao Bao-Gang's Struggle (2007), a series about graduates who are due to start adult life. Wen played Xiang Nan, one of the protagonist's friends, and after this role he began to be recognized. In 2008 he and Ma Yi-Li married. She was eight years older than Wen and recalled that for a long time interviewers kept asking her about the age gap. The couple had two daughters. In 2009 Wen played Xiao Bei in Teng Hua-Tao's Dwelling Narrowness. The series talked a great deal about housing prices and about what it costs a young couple to try to get a place of their own. Wen played a young man who has been living with his beloved girlfriend for several years and suddenly learns that another man has appeared in her life.
Wen's first leading role in a feature film was in A Tale of Two Donkeys (2009). His character, a city youth, is sent to the countryside, where an ordinary clash with a stubborn donkey turns into a protracted war. Wen joked that on set he sometimes felt as if he were in a one-man show — you can't expect any reaction from a partner with hooves, and you have to keep the rhythm of the scene yourself. In the next film, Xue Xiao-Lu's Ocean Paradise (2010), he was given the role of Dafu, a young man with autism whose terminally ill father tries to prepare him for an independent life. The father was played by Jet Li. He took part in the auditions and at first doubted whether the already grown-up Wen was right for the role. Dafu feels freer in the water than on land, and Wen, by his own admission, could not swim. Once he got comfortable in the pool, he swam five kilometers a day in training. For this role Wen received the film critics' award for best actor at the Shanghai International Film Festival. An HKCinema review noted how natural he and Jet Li looked as son and father.
On television that same year came Snow Leopard, in which Wen played Officer Zhou Weiguo, fighting the Japanese. This series brought him the audience-voted Golden Eagle awards. And Teng Hua-Tao again invited Wen to act in a contemporary story about marriage. In Naked Wedding (2011), he and Yao Di played a couple who decide to register their marriage without an apartment, a car or money for a celebration. Wen worked on the script and, according to Teng, came up with many of the lines himself. In interviews the actor said that in real life he would not have approved of such a decision. It seemed to him irresponsible to start a family while it was unclear what they would live on and where they would raise children. At the same time he said that he showed Ma Yi-Li the script of every episode and waited for her feedback.
2013 also saw the release of Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons, directed by Stephen Chow together with Derek Kwok. Wen played the future monk Xuan Zang, who tries to subdue demons with children's songs while a far more skilled huntress, played by Shu Qi, does the work for him. The HKCinema reviewer noted how easily Wen picked up Chow's own comic manner. Around the same time Wen was preparing the release of Little Daddy, the first series he directed himself. He worked on the script and played a father who, after his son arrives from America, has to learn on the fly how to raise him. Ma Yi-Li was the producer and played one of the leading roles. Wen himself said the idea came to him after the birth of his first daughter, and that he borrowed some of his directing techniques from Teng Hua-Tao.
In March 2014, the magazine Nandu Yule Zhoukan reported that Wen was seeing Yao Di and published photos of the couple. Shortly before that, Wen and Ma Yi-Li had had their second daughter. On 31 March the actor admitted his infidelity on Weibo and asked his wife and children for forgiveness. Ma Yi-Li responded that falling in love is easy, living in marriage is hard, and one must cherish what one has. Her words spread across the Chinese internet, and several TV channels soon reran Naked Wedding and Little Daddy. The marriage survived at the time. A few years later the couple worked on the same set again. Both announced their divorce in July 2019.
Wen's first major television role after the scandal was in Shao Shuai. He was cast as Zhang Xueliang. The series was directed by Zhang Li, and the hero's father, the Manchu warlord Zhang Zuolin, was played by Li Xue-Jian. Wen said he agreed largely for the chance to work with both of them. In late 2015 the series was shown in Wuhan, and in January 2016 it aired on satellite channels. That same year saw the release of Wen's first feature film as a director, When Larry Met Mary, a comedy about longtime friends, one of whom for years lacks the courage to speak of love. The leading roles were played by Bao Bei-Er and Song Jia. In 2017 the film earned Wen a Golden Rooster for best directorial debut. That same year he directed Razor, a spy series set in 1930s Harbin. He played a lowly police clerk, while Ma Yi-Li played an underground operative working undercover in the police. The actress recalled that by then Wen had grown so comfortable with directing that on set he even took an interest in the work of the cinematographer and the lighting crew.
Wen worked with Chow again in The Mermaid (2016), playing a police officer to whom the protagonist tries in vain to describe a mermaid. Wen directed the short film GSD (2017), in which entrepreneur Jack Ma takes on martial arts stars one after another. In Bao Bei-Er's Fat Buddies (2018), Wen played an agent who rapidly gains weight after a botched mission. He later returned to the role of Zhou Weiguo in Xue Bao Zhi Hu Xiao Jun Hun (2020) and appeared in a small role in Solitary Man (2024), again for Bao Bei-Er.
In 2017 Wen returned to the stage after a ten-year hiatus. For his one-man show Every Lovely Little Thing (每一件美妙的小事) he received an acting award at a contemporary theatre festival held in Shanghai's Jing'an District. In 2023 he played patient number five in Stan Lai's Shanghai production A Dream Like a Dream (如夢之夢). In this play the audience sits in the centre of the hall while the actors perform around them. Wen's dying patient agrees to tell the doctor his story, and with it begins the many-hour performance. In January 2025, marking the play's twenty-fifth anniversary, a reunion of its creators and actors was held, and Wen took part in it.
