Michael Chen He 陈赫
When Michael Chen played the late-night host in iPartment, passersby would call out to him by his character's name: "Zeng Xiaoxian!" On the big screen, Chen has played a dapper cop in Detective Chinatown and a lovestruck factory troublemaker in Hi, Mom. And when he was invited to play a hired assassin in Sniper, the director asked him to keep the little chuckle audiences knew so well. This time, that laugh was supposed to send a shiver down your spine.
Chen He was born on November 9, 1985 in Changle, now a district of Fuzhou, in Fujian Province. His mother, Hu Xiaoling, was an actress and headed the Fujian People's Art Theatre. Chen said he grew up around the stage and that choosing this profession seemed natural to him. Director Chen Kaige is a distant relative of his. In 2004, Chen enrolled at the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Du Jiang and Ryan Zheng studied alongside him and shared his dormitory. Zheng recalled how one night a classmate suffered an acute appendicitis attack and he helped him get to the hospital. A few years later, the two were reminiscing about that story on television.
After graduating from the academy in 2008, Chen joined the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre. He appeared in the production How Du Lala Got Promoted and in Romeo and Zhu Yingtai, where the heroes of a Shakespearean tragedy and a Chinese legend meet. He rose to wide fame with iPartment (2009), Wei Zheng's comedy about young people living next door to each other in Shanghai. Chen's character, Zeng Xiaoxian, hosts a late-night show about love and happily dispenses advice to his listeners. In his own love life he is far less self-assured, especially when it comes to his neighbor Hu Yifei. On air, Zeng likes to repeat that he is that very good guy. Chen said that after the series people on the street called him only Zeng Xiaoxian, and it felt as if he had lost his own name.
Chen played Zeng for four seasons in a row. By the time of iPartment Season 4 (2014), he said, the actors already knew each other's habits and could handle their lines more freely. When his colleagues on set decided to surprise him for his birthday, he immediately suspected something was up, and then through the peephole he saw them arriving with a cake and presents. All he had to do was pretend to be surprised. That same year he became a regular on Keep Running, the Chinese version of the Korean show Running Man on Zhejiang Television. There Chen found himself in the same company as Ryan Zheng once again. The participants competed in teams, one of which was led by Deng Chao, and in one of the main contests they tried to rip each other's name tags off. In 2015 came the film Running Man, featuring Chen and several of his co-stars from the show.
Alongside this, Chen began appearing in films a great deal. In Gu Chang-Wei's Love on the Cloud (2014), he played an aspiring screenwriter named Sha Guo. His co-star AngelaBaby was also part of Keep Running. Discussing the film in an interview, Chen said he would like to play a villain, but such roles rarely come along. The following winter he appeared in Chen Si-Cheng's Detective Chinatown (2015). His Huang Landeng, a flashy and self-assured Bangkok policeman, chases the murder suspect played by Wang Bao-Qiang and competes with another detective, played by Sean Sun Yi-Zhou. In HKCinema's review, Chen stood out among the film's comedians for the sense of humor with which he plays a dandy who lands in hot water time and again.
Chen dated his school friend Xu Jing for thirteen years. While they were studying in different cities, he would take the train to see her. Chen later wrote that 144 train tickets would tell the story of their four student years better than anything. They married in 2013 and held their wedding in Phuket. The following summer the couple took part in the family reality show Zhen Ai Zai Jiong Tu. In January 2015, when rumors of a split began to circulate, Chen publicly apologized for having concealed his divorce. He explained the breakup by saying that, because of filming, the couple hardly saw each other and rarely talked. Chen's agency clarified that shooting on the family show had ended in August. The divorce agreement the actor published bore the date September 11, 2014.
Soon after the divorce announcement, a video surfaced in the press showing Chen together with actress Zhang Zi-Xuan. They had appeared together in Fleet of Time and Yi Guan Xiao Zhuan. The actress confirmed they were dating and said she had already discussed the separation with her husband. The public argued over when their relationship had begun, and Chen and Zhang later married. They have two daughters, whose births Chen announced on social media in 2016 and 2020.
In Super Express (2016), Chen played Xiao Ma, a Shanghai courier who ends up with a package containing a stolen museum figurine. For the film, Chen learned to ride a motorcycle. By his own account, on Shanghai's narrow streets he was especially afraid of dropping Song Ji-Hyo, who was sitting behind him. The figurine is pursued by the character of French parkour master David Belle. The HKCinema reviewer noted how the actors complement each other in the chases and comic scenes, even though on set they had to work in several languages.
Chen returned to the role of Zeng in the feature-length Apartment of Love (2018). Wei Zheng transported the sitcom's characters into the world of adventure novels about tomb raiders, and some viewers who had expected a continuation of the Shanghai neighbors' story greeted this turn with hostility. In the final iPartment Season 5 (2020), Chen appeared in only a few episodes, and Zeng and Hu Yifei finally got married. Between his two returns to the role of Zeng, Chen played veterinarian Hao Yun in Bureau of Transformer (2019). After an incident at the clinic, Hao Yun learns that transformers exist and soon finds himself investigating their affairs. Director Jin Zhe-Yong recalled how, during one heavy scene, Chen had to cry on set all night, take after take.
In Sniper (2020), director Wu Bai entrusted Chen with the role of Chi Tiecheng, a hired killer who poses as a pastry chef. Chen learned to make cakes, and in the series his work can be seen in close-up. Much harder was getting used to the long wig, whose strands blew into his face in the wind and got in the way of speaking. Chen came up with how his character would laugh, but Wu Bai asked him to laugh the way he used to. The director wanted the familiar laugh to sound eerie when Chi Tiecheng goes up against his former partner, played by Huang Xuan.
In Hi, Mom (2021), Jia Ling's film, Chen again played a comic role. His Leng Te, the local bully, falls in love with Jia Ling's heroine, who travels from 2001 into the past, where her mother is still young. Back in 2016, Chen and Zhang Xiao-Fei had already appeared with Jia Ling in the sketch that grew into the film. Chen kept working in television as well. In the family series Our Days (2024), he played Deng Haiyang, the husband of one of three sisters. And in the travel show "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha," which launched in 2020, he was reunited with Deng Chao. By the program's rules, the participants have to take odd jobs along the way. Chen, for instance, had to sell noodles. In 2026 he took part in the show's sixth season, and this time the journey ended in the Changbai Mountains.
