Fan Bingbing
Fan Bingbing is an actor, born 1981.
Fan Bingbing's career splits into two unequal halves. In China she has been a genuine A-lister for over twenty years, since the costume drama My Fair Princess made her recognisable in the late nineties and Feng Xiaogang's Cell Phone turned that into the Hundred Flowers best actress award. Internationally she is mostly known as Blink, a small supporting role in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
The serious work is on the Chinese side, and most of it belongs to two directors. With Li Yu she made Lost in Beijing, Buddha Mountain, Double Xposure and Ever Since We Love, a run of art house films about women pushed to the edge of what they can absorb. Reuniting with Feng for I Am Not Madame Bovary, she played Li Xuelian, a rural woman who will not let a legal grievance go, in a film shot largely inside a circular frame, and won the Silver Shell at San Sebastian and the Golden Rooster for it.
She is also, unusually for an actress of that standing, a dependable presence in big commercial spectacle: wuxia, palace epics, League of Gods, L.O.R.D., a Jackie Chan action comedy, an English language spy film. The imported roles have never used her properly. Watch what happens when a Chinese director hands her something real to play, and the gap is embarrassing.
Movies (42)
- Ice Road: Vengeance (2025)
- Lost in Beijing (2007)
- X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
- My Way (2011)
- The 355 (2022)
- Shaolin (2011)
- Flash Point (2007)
- The King's Daughter (2022)
- Beginning of the Great Revival (2011)
- Skiptrace (2016)
- L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties (2016)
- Shinjuku Incident (2009)
- Diary of a Mad Old Man
- Bodyguards and Assassins (2009)
- The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom (2014)
- Green Night (2023)
- League of Gods (2016)
- Battle of the Warriors (2006)
- Air Strike (2018)
- Future X-Cops (2010)
- Sky Hunter (2017)
- Lost in Thailand (2012)
- Mother Bhumi (2025)
- The Lion Roars (2002)
- I Am Not Madame Bovary (2016)
- The Twins Effect II (2004)
- Sacrifice (2010)
- A Chinese Tall Story (2005)
- Buddha Mountain (2011)
- Lady of the Dynasty (2015)
TV (22)
- My Fair Princess (1998)
- Chef Nic (2014)
- The Young Detective (2000)
- The Empress of China (2014)
- Diors Man (2012)
- The Amazing Race China (2014)
- Legend of Dagger Lee (1999)
- The Proud Twins (2005)
- The Legend and the Hero (2006)
- Master Ma (1997)
- The Legend Of The Treasure Basin (2003)
- Jian Lin Tian Xia (2005)
- 尘埃落定 (2003)
- Challenger’s Alliance (2015)
- Heroic Legend (2003)
- Eight Heroes (2006)
- 秦始皇 (2007)
- 还珠格格2
- 马永贞之争霸上海滩 (1998)
- Memoirs of Madam Jin (2009)
- Good Luck Zhu Bajie (2004)
- Loving Book (2002)
Where to start with Fan Bingbing
I Am Not Madame Bovary first, without hesitation. It is the film that shows what she can do with a character who has no glamour to fall back on, and formally it is the boldest thing she has ever appeared in.
Cell Phone is the breakthrough and still holds up as a comedy of male self deception. Then take the Li Yu films: Buddha Mountain is the best of them and Double Xposure the strangest.
If you want the star rather than the actress, The Empress of China is enormous, glossy palace television, and My Fair Princess is where the whole thing began. Shinjuku Incident is the underrated pick, a crime film that gives her something bruised to play.
Skip most of the international work. X-Men: Days of Future Past uses her as scenery, and the English language films that followed have not done any better.