At the 95th Academy Awards just held, Yang Ziqiong won the Best Actress Award for "Instant Universe". This is unprecedented-Asian actresses won the Oscar for Best Actress.
In fact, before the Oscar ceremony, Yang Ziqiong kept refreshing history: she won the Best Actress of the 94th National Film Critics Association; After winning the 80th Golden Globe Music Comedy; Won the best actress in the 29th American Actors Guild, the first Asian actress in the Actors Guild; She also became the first best actor award in the highest honor independent spirit award in American independent film industry. ...
Undoubtedly, winning the Oscar for Best Actress is a great personal victory for Yang Ziqiong and a miracle created by Asian actors in Hollywood.
However, it is difficult for us to be optimistic that this victory is the victory of Asian actors, or that the success of Instant Universe will rewrite the fate of Asian actors. Asian actors have a long way to go in Hollywood.
Yang Ziqiong's great victory
Oscar-winning actress-This is a great personal victory for Yang Ziqiong.
To some extent, Yang Ziqiong's Asian mother in A Moment's Universe is a microcosm of Yang Ziqiong's life. As an Asian woman, Yang Ziqiong also has a multiple life universe, but she insists on choosing the path of actress, which leads to Yang Ziqiong winning the Oscar in this real universe.
Yang Ziqiong was born in 1964, a wealthy China family. She began to learn ballet at the age of 4, and was admitted to the Royal Dance Academy in London at the age of 15. However, Yang Ziqiong's dream of dancing was shattered by a spinal injury.
1983, encouraged by her mother, Yang Ziqiong took part in the Miss Malaysia competition and won the championship. 1984, Yang Ziqiong came to Hong Kong to shoot an advertisement. By chance, he will enter the Hong Kong film industry. Her first film was Owl and Dumbo, which played an innocent jade girl who was rescued.
But becoming a beautiful vase is not what Yang Ziqiong wants. She embarked on a less traveled and more challenging road: becoming a beaten woman.
1985, Yang Ziqiong starred in his first action movie, Sister Wang, which transformed him into a star player. Soon he dared to fight and fight, and soon he fought his way out in the action movie market dominated by male star players. After a short marriage, Yang Ziqiong returned with 1992 with "Police Story 3", and she is still recognized as a Hong Kong-made heroine.
1995, Yang Ziqiong almost broke his back completely and died on the set because of a mistake in shooting an action film. Yang Ziqiong still hasn't given up. From 65438 to 0997, she became the first "bond girl" in Asia. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000 further made Yang Ziqiong famous internationally. In 2004, Yang Ziqiong turned his career focus to Hollywood.
However, due to the marginal position of Asian actors in Hollywood, Yang Ziqiong's career development in Hollywood was not successful. Starring in some leading movies, but the production scale is average, there is nothing to announce, and the box office reputation is very average; Play more supporting roles to highlight the Asian image in Hollywood tradition. For example, Crazy Asian Rich has made gratifying box office achievements in Hollywood, but Yang Ziqiong plays an Asian mother with deep pockets-in line with Hollywood's stereotype of Asian rich people.
As for the instant universe, which was a great success this time, the original script was from a male perspective. The director originally invited Jackie Chan. Jackie Chan missed it for other reasons, and the director changed the script to a female perspective. Yang Ziqiong got the opportunity to "seize the loophole" ...
Through a brief review of Yang Ziqiong's personal performance resume, we can clearly see that Yang Ziqiong's previous performance career was not smooth or even bumpy.
In the multiverse of her life, she could have been a model, a "vase", a housewife, or an Asian supporting actress who played soy sauce in Hollywood movies. ...
However, because of her persistence for 40 years, her love for acting and her unremitting waiting for a good role, she has become an international superstar Yang Ziqiong in the spotlight at the moment. In her Oscar acceptance speech, she said: "This is a beacon of hope, which proves that great dreams can indeed come true. And women, don't let anyone define' your years are gone' and never give up. "
The Oscar for Best Actress is a praise for an actress who has always insisted. Yang Ziqiong deserves such an honor.
The victory of the Asians has not yet arrived.
There is no denying that Guan Jiwei's best supporting actor and Yang Ziqiong's best actress are both new history created by Asian actors in Hollywood.
However, does this mean that Asian actors will win from now on? Asian actors have been proud in Hollywood since then?
I'm afraid it's not that optimistic.
The data directly shows us the difficulties of Asian actors in Hollywood.
In 202 1 year, the permanent population of the United States was 33140,000, and the Asian population accounted for about 6 1% of the total population of the United States, about 20 million. Such a population to population ratio is not low. But for a long time in the past, we rarely saw works starring Asians in Hollywood movies. According to a previous report, among the top 65,438+000 movies in North America in 2065,438+07, only four were directed by Asians, while only 4.8% of the movies were played by Asians, and the other 37 movies did not have any Asian roles.
The 20 18 Asian-themed film "Crazy Asian Rich Man" got unexpected attention in Hollywood. Interestingly, before the film was made, some Hollywood producers took the initiative to find the original author of the novel and made an attractive offer, but they also made a request: the heroine of this book should be changed to white, on the grounds that not many white people were willing to go to the cinema to see an Asian story.
The same experience happened to Korean novelist Jenny Han. A long time ago, some producers liked her novel to all the boys I loved, but the producers asked the heroine of the novel to be white.
Fortunately, the creators of these two works insisted on the Asian face, and they were lucky to succeed. But they are only a few successful stories, and more Asian stories have been transformed into "white" stories.
Of course, the most outrageous thing is the early Hollywood movies. Asian stories even invite white actors to star, but they just make up to look Asian. Make-up is naturally the same, such as the notorious "squint".
Because of Asian stories and the marginal position of Asian actors, no Asian actors have flourished in Hollywood in the past few decades. Including Yang Ziqiong, her influence before Instant Universe was limited to Asians, and her awareness in mainstream American society was not high.
Guan Jiwei, who won the best supporting actor, had a more embarrassing experience.
65438-0980, Guan Jiwei was a famous child star in China, who participated in raiders of the lost ark and goonies. But then he disappeared from the big screen for a long time, because as an Asian, he couldn't wait for the role Hollywood needed, so he had to move behind the scenes. In 2020, he took over Instant Universe, but the film was postponed to 2022 because of the epidemic. Throughout 202 1, he didn't take the show, and he couldn't even afford medical insurance at the end of the year. He mentioned in the interview, "So I have to ask for an agent, what role, give me a job first, any role will do, so that I can qualify to continue medical insurance next year."
In other words, before Instant Universe, Yang Ziqiong, who had an appointment and played an important supporting role, was already the ceiling that Asian actors could reach in Hollywood. More Asian actors are in the same situation as Guan Jiwei: waiting and waiting, not even supporting roles, even life is a problem.
Nowadays, the great success of the instant universe has increased the popularity of Asian actors as never before. However, "lip service" also needs to be "real". In the final analysis, if Asian actors want to have a bigger stage and get a better life situation, they must have more movies like Hollywood's Instant Universe and focus more on Asian stories.
Visible to the naked eye in recent years, Hollywood is still dominated by white stories-from the head production of several major production companies in the next few years, it can be seen that there are very few Asian stories and victory has arrived. It can only be said that I hope that the "instant universe" that creates history can slowly change this situation.
Anyway, congratulations to Yang Ziqiong. Compared with the success of a certain color, she won the best actress Oscar, which is essentially the success of a great actress.