Zhu Ya-Wen 朱亚文
Zhu Ya-Wen rose to fame as the stubborn son of settlers in Chuang Guan Dong. For a long time afterwards, directors kept casting him as men who could endure frost, war, and a hard life in a new place. Audiences especially remembered him in Red Sorghum, where he played the peasant Yu Zhan'ao, who becomes a bandit. And in that same year, 2014, he played a timid writer on screen — in Golden Age by Ann Hui On-Wah. Later Zhu played two utterly different participants in the Korean War — a company political instructor in The Battle at Lake Changjin and an engineer in The Volunteers: To the War.
Zhu Ya-Wen comes from Yancheng in Jiangsu Province. He was born on April 21, 1984, though an early interview published by Sohu gives 1981. His mother taught at a university, and his father worked in the prosecutor's office after leaving the army. Discipline at home, Zhu recalls, was almost barrack-like. For a misdeed his father could put his son out the door and order him to march. In his youth Zhu studied vocals and, on a teacher's advice, went to take the acting entrance exams. At the time he had little idea of the profession, but he was admitted to the Beijing Film Academy and graduated from its acting department.
Zhu first appeared on screen in Yang Guang Yu Ji, released in 2005 while he was still a student. A few years later Zhu was invited to audition for Chuang Guan Dong. According to him, the director's assistant looked him over and said at once that there was no part for him here. Zhu was already leaving when he ran into the chief director in the doorway. They talked for about half an hour, after which the director called an actor he knew and asked how Zhu worked on set. The man spoke well of him, and after screen tests Zhu was confirmed as Zhu Chuanwu, the second son in a family of Shandong migrants. The series came out in 2008. Viewers remembered the headstrong young man who charges ahead first and thinks about the consequences later.
Several more big historical series followed. In The Ultimate Master of War (2009) he played the commander Sun Wu, known as Sun Tzu. According to Zhu, so little is known about the commander's life that he could allow himself more freedom than a historical role usually permits. In another series, also titled Red Sorghum in Russian (2010), he played a political instructor who could not sing in tune. Zhu had trained in vocals, and deliberately singing off-key turned out to be hard for him. On the set of Love in the Vast Land (2010) he met the actress Shen Jia-Ni. They married in June 2013, and in 2015 and 2018 their daughters were born.
Zhu came to the big screen through Mystery (2012) by Lou Ye. He said he agreed above all for the sake of working with this director. In the film he had a small role as a man conducting his own investigation. Some scenes were cut in editing, and Lou Ye explained that as work went on he became more interested in the story that unfolds after the mystery is solved. And for Golden Age (2014), Ann Hui wanted to talk to Zhu. He came to the meeting without much hope, and they talked for more than two hours about life and work. In the end Hui entrusted him with the role of the writer Duanmu Hongliang, husband of Xiao Hong, played by Tang Wei. Preparing for the shoot, Zhu read about the writers of Republican China and studied their photographs. He wanted to understand what this indecisive man could have done to win Xiao Hong over.
In the television Red Sorghum (2014), based on Mo Yan's novel, Zhu plays Yu Zhan'ao, a peasant who becomes a bandit. Ann Hui remembered him thin and haggard in the farewell scene in Golden Age. For the role of Yu Zhan'ao Zhu put on weight and began training. According to him, for almost a month he carried a palanquin, ran and fought in the sorghum fields from morning on. Shen Jia-Ni came to the set and helped him with everyday matters. They also talked about work — discussing, for instance, what the character played by Zhou Xun feels in the scene of their growing closeness. Zhu himself saw Yu Zhan'ao as a man trying to survive in a cruel time and to save those he trusts. For this role he received the Asian television Rainbow Award in 2016.
Zhu also eagerly took on contemporary characters. In the series Bei Shang Guang Bu Xiang Xin Yan Lei (2015), he and Ma Yi-Li played a married couple who have to hide their marriage at work. In the thriller The Witness (2015), he landed a role unusual for him — that of a maniac. An HKCinema reviewer felt that Zhu in this part relied too much on a crazed stare. On the TV show "Voice in Frame" in 2018, by contrast, he made do with his voice alone. Zhu won the first season of that dubbing competition, and viewers especially remembered the way he delivered a simple "kid" — long after the broadcast, people kept reminding him of that line.
Zhu played Zhou Enlai twice. In the series Nos Annees Francais (2012), he is a young man who has only just arrived in France to study and work, while in The Founding of An Army (2017) he is one of the organizers of the Nanchang Uprising. Zhu said that the second time around he thought less about resembling his character and tried to convey his resolve. In The Chinese Pilot (2019), made in the wake of an emergency passenger jet landing, he played an aviation inspector. In Empress of the Ming the same year, his character was the emperor Zhu Zhanji, and in Impasse (2021) by Zhang Yi-Mou he is one of four agents dropped into occupied Manchuria.
In The Battle at Lake Changjin (2021) and Watergate Bridge (2022), Zhu played the political instructor Mei Sheng. Chen Kaige wanted this educated Shanghai man to convey the toughness of a soldier capable of leading others. Zhu dreamed up scenes not in the film — how Mei Sheng talks with his wife and daughter at home, how passersby look at him. When he had to play Mei Sheng's longing for his daughter, Zhu said he drew on his own experience as a father. In Chen Kaige's next trilogy, which began with The Volunteers: To the War (2023), Zhu was given the role of the engineer Wu Benzhen, who returns from abroad and goes to the front to find out how weapons behave in combat. In the second part, The Volunteers: To the War 2 (2024), the engineer himself has to take the tank's controls. Zhu said he had awaited that scene impatiently. He played the engineer in the final picture, The Volunteers: Peace at Last (2025), as well.
In 2026, Zhu played an emperor again, this time one who rose from the army to the throne. In the historical series Swords into Plowshares, he was given the role of Zhao Kuangyin, founder of the Song dynasty. Zhu said he was interested in the experience of a commander who had seen regimes crumble and understood that power could be seized by force, but that preserving peace was harder. In September, he received the Golden Eagle as best supporting actor for this role.
