Drifting in Hengdian: Dreams are about taking off, but reality is about falling

What is the real life of an unknown actor like? The author of this article interviewed an actor who majored in film but encountered many setbacks over the years. Let's take a look at his story.

Many people who come to Hengdian to pursue their dreams and make money think that they will take off.

This is the area with the highest concentration of celebrities in the country, and it is also where the traffic converges. Fans come from all over the world and gather at the entrances of various hotels, just to take a look at the celebrities during their commute. Photographers are also rampant in this town. In order to take photos of celebrities, they "climb rocks" and climb trees, and compete with the crew for wits and courage.

The taxi and online car-hailing drivers in Hengdian are well-informed. One driver told Xuebao Finance that a photographer once wanted to pay 2,000 yuan to hire a car for a day and let him take him around the "mountains" in Hengdian. If someone takes the money back and asks for a taxi ticket, they are usually hired "fake fans".

Actor Hong Xu (pseudonym) has also had many hallucinations of taking off, but reality responded with silence.

He participated in a popular talent show and thought he had opened the door to a production team, but he didn't expect that "idol" would become a negative label. He also briefly gained traffic in the era of short videos, but it quickly disappeared. He even received a big drama project and thought his career would start from then on, but he didn't expect that what awaited him was a longer period of unemployment.

Working in this industry means jumping between hope and disappointment countless times.

The frequency of disappointment was higher than the frequency of his hair loss. Whenever he got bad news and woke up the next day to see so much hair on his pillow, he became even more desperate.

"What broke the camel's back was not the last straw, but my last hair. If I really don't want to do this anymore, the only thing this industry can bring me is baldness," Hongxu said self-deprecatingly.

In a crowded hotpot restaurant in Hengdian, he told his story to Snow Leopard Finance through the fog.

01 Suddenly fell down while climbing a mountain

In December 2023, Hongxu drove for more than ten hours from Beijing to Hengdian. Because he was afraid of getting sleepy, he chatted with people on the phone all the way, and his voice was hoarse when he arrived at the crew hotel.

People who had worked with him in the previous crew were a little surprised when they saw him, "Why have you changed?"

Hongxu grew a beard, which was unusual for him. With his delicate appearance, he was often mistaken for a college student, but with the beard, he looked a bit like a hippie.

This is the second time he has grown a beard.

The first time was in 2019, when he received his first long drama project in his life, and the role had a lot of scenes. But not long after the start of filming, the epidemic broke out, the crew was shut down, and some projects even went bankrupt. The crew that Hongxu was in also stopped working. The excitement and joy of joining the crew had not yet subsided, but were replaced by uneasiness and anxiety. During that period, he grew a beard.

It's like falling down while climbing a mountain. Hongxu has had this experience many times in his career.

Soon after he entered the industry, he briefly caught the attention of the industry. In 2017, a short video he shot received more than 5 million likes in two days, and the number of views exceeded 100 million in a month. His fans followed him from Douyin to Weibo. Because of this video, many entertainment companies in Beijing extended olive branches to him. After a long investigation, he finally chose a company that had his high school alumni - "I feel more at ease with fellow villagers around."

At that time, TikTok had only been online for a year and had not yet become an important platform for highlighting the popularity of artists. Neither Hongxu himself nor the company paid much attention to it, and after that hit video, they did not continue to cultivate it, and the traffic quickly dissipated.

Idol cultivation was once the hottest topic in the entertainment industry. After the two shows "Idol Producer" and "Produce 101" became popular, 2018 was called the "first year of idol cultivation." Major film and television companies and brokerage companies have opened up idol businesses, and becoming an "idol" has become a stepping stone for many people to enter the entertainment industry.

After arriving in Beijing, Hongxu also joined the company's idol department and successfully participated in a talent show.

Hongxu didn't have high expectations for the ranking, he wanted to gain a certain amount of exposure through the show.

Exposure requires camera shots. One show lasts two to three hours, with hundreds of contestants and too many people for too little space, so it is not easy to get camera shots in the show.

In order to get more shots, he spoke to the camera for half an hour while the program crew was preparing for the interview. But it turned out that this was not very useful, and the episode in which he got the most shots was the one in which he was eliminated.

In this battle royale game, Hongxu survived two rounds. He had more opportunities to interview with the crew, but the exposure did not last long, and the director began to dislike using idols. Although he was a professional actor, because he participated in a talent show, Hongxu was labeled as an idol that was not favored by the crew.

From 2019 to 2022, Hongxu kept interviewing and meeting with production crews. He occasionally received supporting roles in some small and medium-cost dramas, but more often he was unemployed for a long time.

In 2022, Hongxu finally got an important role in an S-level costume drama. A crew of several hundred people started filming in Hengdian. He had never seen such a big show, had never been in contact with such a professional team, and the cast was something he had never dared to imagine before. "It felt like a dream come true." He really thought his career was going to take off.

However, the "Godot" he was waiting for did not come. After the S-level project was completed, Hongxu entered the longest period of unemployment in his career. During this period, he grew a beard again.

It was not until more than a year later that he returned to Hengdian, joined a new crew, and started a new role.

02 Just take a role as long as there is a movie to shoot.

To take on this new role, Hongxu had to overcome his own psychological barrier first - this is an unpleasant character. Even if it is a character that you have created, it still takes courage to be hated by the audience.

He struggled for a long time and communicated with the screenwriter about whether to make the role more likable, but he finally decided to stick to the original setting of the script. Each character has its own function, and his role is to add fuel to the fire, and he will be "killed in seconds" by the male lead after adding fuel to the fire for a long time. In this case, he will make the audience hate him very much.

His last role was a character similar to a fence-sitter or a second-rate person. Although it was a minor character, he carefully studied the character's psychology, enriched the character's background based on his own understanding, and added a lot of designs.

At the beginning, Hongxu didn't dare to discuss his ideas with the director. He could only test them little by little on the spot to see the director's attitude. Only after getting the director's approval did he dare to let go.

For the crew, time is money. Many directors will plan the camera positions and content in advance, leaving little room for supporting actors to perform. Hongxu was lucky because he added a lot of designs to the role, and the director kept them all.

Before the official shooting, many crews will organize a script reading - this is a link that Hongxu likes very much. Just like the Olympic athletes entering the stadium, the script reading is a concentrated appearance and a detailed exchange of skills between the actors. After a round of reading, everyone will have a ranking of each other in their minds.

When actors act, it is important to have a good match. Only when the two people can match and cooperate well, the play will be good. The most frightening thing is to act with one person and all the points thrown at him cannot be received or responded. In this case, the play is not good, and it can only rely on the editing of the editor, and the edited content is also a semi-finished product.

When he was in college, Hongxu ranked first in his grade in his major and received a scholarship. His class teacher told him that he had great explosiveness in acting, which was his advantage. But after so many years in the industry, he had never received a role that required explosiveness.

Sometimes, when he sees other people's roles, he would envy them and even secretly think that if he played the role, he would be able to play it better. But actors are like commodities in a window, always being chosen.

Many actors he had never seen or heard of were able to get good roles right away, perhaps because they were backed by influential companies or because of their outstanding appearance. Although Hongxu envied them, he knew his own conditions - he was not the type of actor favored by capital or the market, and he did not expect such good luck to fall on him.

Stanislavsky, a famous Russian drama theorist, once said, "There are only small actors, but no small roles." Hongxu has always believed this. His request is simple: to have a lot of roles to play, regardless of the size of the role or the role.

Hongxu used to be a bit of a show-off, thinking that actors should play different roles and experience different lives. But now he deeply feels the difficulty of shaping a character - it is good enough to play a role that suits him. "I want to stand out in the field that suits me, so that people will think of me immediately when they mention certain types of roles."

Becoming a golden supporting actor - this is Hongxu's ultimate ideal.

03 Bread and ideals are at risk

Many actors will talk about their experiences of hitting a wall after becoming famous, but Hongxu has now lost count of how many plays he has been rejected from.

In the past, he had five or six interviews a week, about 120 in half a year. In the second half of 2023, he only had 40 to 50 interviews.

Video websites have reduced costs and increased efficiency, cutting a large number of small and medium-cost and mid-level projects, which is the source of many job opportunities at Hongxu.

After being unemployed for more than a year, money became a real problem. Including mortgage and car loan, he has nearly 20,000 yuan in expenses every month. Before coming to Hengdian this time, he was almost at the point of borrowing money.

The acting industry looks glamorous, but in fact many people are struggling. Many people think that actors can make a living for a year by filming one movie, and it doesn't matter if they don't have any movies to film. But the fact is that only a small number of people can make money.

Hongxu's family is not well-off. His father stopped working a long time ago, and his mother's salary is the only source of income. After graduating from college, he performed in a pioneer drama in Chengdu for a period of time. The rehearsal fee for each show was only 10 to 25 yuan, and it has only risen to 50 yuan a day now. After signing a contract with a company and starting to film, his income increased a little, but he often spent more than he earned.

Every night before going to bed, Hongxu would encourage himself: I must audition well and prepare well. But when he was eating the next day, he couldn't help but think about his savings and the future.

He has thought about changing careers countless times, driving an online car-hailing service or live-streaming to sell goods. There are also actors around him who sell goods or become online celebrities. Although they have income and the work is relatively easy, they are not as happy as when they were actors. Moreover, live-streaming is already a red ocean. If there is no official push, few people will watch the live broadcast, and no goods will be sold.

When Hongxu first started using Douyin, there weren’t that many people making videos. He could get likes by just uploading his videos, and gained 100,000 followers in a short period of time. But now it’s different. His works will soon be drowned out. A few hundred or a few thousand views cannot be monetized, and it doesn’t bring any exposure. He has missed this opportunity.

In Hongxu's opinion, the profession of actor is very beautiful, and one can divide his life into many parts for others to see. But for the actor himself, this beauty is like a layer of glass, which can see the light and be illuminated, but cannot catch it. Every time there is a scene to be filmed, it is as if the earth turns to the side where the sun shines, warm and comfortable. But soon it turns back, the light disappears, and it falls into a long night.

Hongxu's ideal is to become a recognized actor and to support the people he loves with his favorite career. This goal is neither high nor low, and it seems easy to achieve, but also difficult to reach.

When he first entered the industry, he set a five-year and ten-year plan for himself. He ambitiously told his mother, "I'll let you see me in the cinema in five years." He also joked with his university professor, "When I come out, our department will be famous." Now, he dare not push himself too hard. In this industry, the greater the hope, the easier it is to be disappointed and fall into internal friction.

Last year, Hongxu went to Lama Temple twice, wishing for a job. Once a variety show came to him, but the other time, the role he wanted was chosen by someone else.

Writer Yu Hua once said that if a person still tells fortunes, it means he is still ambitious. Although he has wavered and doubted himself countless times, Hongxu always holds on to hope in his heart - if he holds on a little longer, the next play will come soon. Every time when he feels that he has run out of money and is at the end of his rope, he always sees a ray of hope.

Just like at the end of 2023, he came to Hengdian again.

Author: Chen Dan

Source: Xuebao Finance (ID: xuebaocaijingshe)