Han Geng
Han Geng is an actor, born 1984.
Han Geng's career began with a contract and ended up in a courtroom. Born in Mudanjiang in Heilongjiang province in 1984, he became a trainee at S.M. Entertainment in 2001, debuted in 2005 as a member of Super Junior, and in 2008 took charge of its Mandarin-market subunit, Super Junior-M. In 2009 he filed suit to terminate his contract; the dispute was settled in 2011, by which point he had already moved his working life back to China.
The acting followed, and it took an unusual shape. Rather than the romantic-lead track a pop career normally buys, he ended up playing history: Deng Xiaoping in Beginning of the Great Revival, Zhang Xueliang in The Founding of an Army, Guan Yu in Dynasty Warriors, the Monkey King in A Chinese Odyssey Part Three. Those are national-canon figures, and putting a former idol in them says something about the position he was allowed to occupy on a Chinese screen.
The commercial spine is elsewhere. He plays Meng Yun in Ex-Files in 2014 and returns to the same man in the fourth instalment in 2023, nine years of a break-up comedy franchise built partly on his face, and the Wikipedia summary of his career is right that the pivot to acting hardens after 2015 even though the first hits came earlier. He works steadily in variety television as well, and 2025 brought a television role in A Life for a Life.
Movies (19)
- Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
- All the Good Eyes (2026)
- Beginning of the Great Revival (2011)
- Dynasty Warriors (2021)
- The Taking of Tiger Mountain (2014)
- A Chinese Odyssey Part Three (2016)
- The Founding of an Army (2017)
- Three Old Boys (2024)
- The Wasted Times (2016)
- Reborn (2018)
- Against All Odds (2025)
- Attack on the Pin-Up Boys (2007)
- So Young (2013)
- My Kingdom (2011)
- Ever Since We Love (2015)
- Bring Happiness Home (2013)
- Snow Dance (2024)
- The Ex-Files 4: Marriage Plan (2023)
- Ex-Files (2014)
TV (20)
- Viva La Romance (2018)
- We Are the Champions (2022)
- Round Table (2016)
- Diors Man (2012)
- The Amazing Race China (2014)
- A Taste Gathering (2023)
- Twenty-Four Hours (2016)
- Legacy (2022)
- Real Actor (2019)
- Brilliant Garden (2024)
- Street Dance of China (2018)
- Double Happiness (2025)
- Spy Game (2023)
- Masked Dancing King (2020)
- Crossroad Bistro (2021)
- A Life for a Life (2025)
- Still Not Enough (2020)
- Explorers of the Human Body (2007)
- 星星的密室 (2015)
- The Hunter (2024)
Where to start with Han Geng
For the pop-star-turned-actor pivot at its most enjoyable, start with Ex-Files. It is a mainstream break-up comedy that knows exactly what it is, and Meng Yun is the part that made him bankable as an actor rather than as a singer; The Ex-Files 4: Marriage Plan catches up with the same man nearly a decade on.
For something with more weight, The Wasted Times is the best-directed film on this list and uses him sparingly and well, while So Young is the campus drama that got the transition moving.
The historical roles are a category of their own. Beginning of the Great Revival and The Founding of an Army are official-history epics with enormous casts and he is a small piece of each; A Chinese Odyssey Part Three and Dynasty Warriors are the louder, sillier versions of the same instinct. Do not go hunting for him in Transformers: Age of Extinction, where the credit reads Convertible Passenger and means it.