Sun Li
Sun Li is an actor, born 1982.
Twenty-odd years as a leading actress in Chinese television is a larger job than it sounds: the dramas are long, and the lead carries nearly every hour of them. Sun Li broke through with Goddess of Mercy in 2003 and Happiness as Flowers in 2005, then took the 2007 version of Shanghai Bund.
Empresses in the Palace, the 2011 palace drama in which she plays Zhen Huan, made her a household name across the Chinese-speaking world, and it remains the performance the rest of her career is measured against: a young woman entering an imperial court and learning, slowly and at great cost, how the machine actually works. Legend of Mi Yue followed in 2015 and Nothing Gold Can Stay in 2017, and in 2018 she became the youngest actress to complete China's television Grand Slam, taking Best Actress at the Flying Apsaras, Golden Eagle and Magnolia awards.
The film career is the smaller half and more interesting for it. She was Moon in Fearless, Xia Bing in Painted Skin, and Madam Xiao Ai in Zhang Yimou's Shadow, a film composed almost entirely of ink-wash greys, where she has to work in a register close to stage tragedy.
More recent television has moved her into contemporary settings: The Ideal City, I Will Find You a Better Home, A Better Life.
Movies (12)
TV (18)
- Empresses in the Palace (2011)
- Empresses in the Palace (2015)
- Legend of Mi Yue (2015)
- Drawing Sword (2005)
- Diors Man (2012)
- The Ideal City (2021)
- 斯文江南 (2022)
- Nothing Gold Can Stay (2017)
- Romantic Life (2004)
- I Will Find You a Better Home (2020)
- Shanghai Bund (2007)
- Hot Mom! (2013)
- 甄嬛爱不停——甄嬛传小主节晚会 (2025)
- Yu Guan Yin (2003)
- The Dark Romance (2026)
- A Better Life (2025)
- Da Ran Fang (2003)
- Iron Road (2009)
Where to start with Sun Li
Empresses in the Palace is the correct starting point and by far the largest commitment. It is the show that defines her, and the arc it asks her to play is one of the great long-form transformations in television anywhere.
If that length is daunting, use Shadow instead, where she works inside an extremely controlled visual scheme and has to convey a great deal while giving almost nothing away. Nothing Gold Can Stay and Legend of Mi Yue are the other two big period leads, and both show why producers keep handing her women who begin powerless and end otherwise.
Painted Skin is the accessible route into her film work, a supernatural romance with a cast full of stars, and Fearless gives her a small, sentimental role in a martial-arts picture that is worth it for the contrast. For the modern Sun Li, The Ideal City is the better of the contemporary dramas.