Name: 陳淑芳
Year of Birth: 1939
Place of Birth: New Taipei City, Taiwan
Did You Know That...?
On November 21, 2020, the 81-year-old actor Chen Shu-fang became the oldest recipient of an acting award in Golden Horse Awards history. At the same time, she also became the first actor to win both Best Leading Actress and Best Supporting Actress awards in the same year.
Chen Shu-fang (陳淑芳) was born Chen Xiao (陳笑) in Jiufen in 1939. She showed a profound interest in folk dance from an early age, and after graduating from Yilan's Lan-Yang Girls' Junior High School, she tested into the National School of Arts, which was founded in 1955 and became the National Taiwan University of Arts in 2001.
Her love of dance helped Chen maintain a lithe figure, and her graceful dance posture was soon noticed by her instructor Zhang Ying. As a result, in 1956, at the age of 16, Chen was chosen by Zhang to play Wang Mang's favorite concubine in "Annals of the Han Court (漢宮春秋)" during the first Taipei Theatre Festival. Her outstanding performance quickly attracted the attention of talent scouts, and she entered the film and entertainment circle at a time when Taiwanese-language films were enjoying increasing popularity.
In 1957, not graduating from the school, the 18-year-old Chen starred in her first film, the black-and-white Taiwanese-language film "Whose Sins (誰的罪惡)." As the leading lady, she played a role older than her age, portraying a young mother, and her future career would come to be defined by the role.
Just beginning her career of acting, Chen received the news of her father's passing and she needed to support her mother, her adopted sister, and herself. To shoulder family finance, Chen chose to put her studies aside and accepted a large number of film roles offered to her during the rise of Taiwanese-language films. Her beautiful face appearing in film after film earned her the nickname "Goldfish Beauty (金魚美人)."
As an entertainer, Chen Shu-fang believes it is her duty to really dive into the details of every role. "As a performer, even if you are appearing in only one scene, or you are having only one line, you still have to do it well. Give that line well and make yourself the protagonist. Give that line well and you’ll leave an impression on the audience.”
In the 1950s and 1960s, she went on to play roles in dozens of Taiwanese-language films, including "After Five Years of Marriage (結婚五年後, 1959)," "The Merciless Midnight Express (無情夜快車, 1959)," "Ah Ding's Rowdy Dance Troupe (阿丁大鬧歌舞團,1962)," "The Unfortunate One (歹命子, 1963)," and "I Love You My Son (我愛我君我愛子, 1963)."
In 1988, Chen starred in the movie "My Beloved (媽媽再愛我一次)," a remake of the TV series "Mad Woman (瘋女十八年)." Referring her role, Chen said, "I played a bad grandma, a real domineering head of the house."
To immerse herself in the roles she played, Chen said that she would always prepare by observing people. She added: "I've watched all kinds of people over the years, and whenever I saw someone whose situation comparable to that of my role, I would ask her about her situation. I would remember her and bring her out in the role."
She's also made some significant sacrifices in the name of bringing characters to life. For example, for the 1996 film "A Drifting Life (春花夢露)," directed by Lin Cheng-sheng, she got three teeth knocked out to better nail the leaky, hissy sound of an old lady missing teeth.
In 2020, Chen's performance in "Little Big Women (孤味)" earned her a Best Leading Actress nomination at the 57th Golden Horse Awards, her first time being shortlisted for this highest honor in Chinese-language cinema since her 1958 debut.
Chen Shu-fang has said that the circumstances of her character in "Little Big Women," Lin Xiu-ying (林秀英), have some similarities to her own life. They both had experienced long years of empty shell marriage and had to learn to get by on their own. However, as she was reading reading the script repeatedly, once, twice, and a third time, she pushed herself to gradually leave behind her true identity.
"Upon receiving a script, the first time when you read it, you should get a clear picture of the whole story, then, reading it a second time, you would start telling yourself : 'I'm not Chen Shu-fang, I am Xiu-ying.' When you read it again, the third time, you would really put the emotion into it," she said, enthusiastically explaining her approach. "By the time you travelled from Taipei down to Tainan and joined the crew [for filming], you were no longer Chen Shu-fang."
"Little Big Women" is entirely built around the tough and refined Lin Xiu-ying. Even Liao Ching-sung, producer of the film, was highly impressed by Chen's performance. "She really was the epitome of Taiwanese woman in the 1950s, and she really brought out that feeling of a put-upon, but personally strong woman in the very masculine society of the south." Watching the film, the audience can hardly tell how much of the portrayal is Lin Xiuying and how much is Chen Shu-fang herself, Liao Ching-sung said, adding that "she completely disappeared into that role, right to the point you couldn’t tell who she really was, and you just recognize the role she was playing."
In addition to "Little Big Women," the same year Chen also appeared on the big screen in two other films. One was "Wild Sparrow (野雀之詩)," in which she played an old woman living with her grandson deep in the mountains. The other was "Dear Tenant (親愛的房客)," in which she portrayed a diabetic woman who had lost her eldest son and lived under the same roof as her son's lover, played by Mo Tzu-yi (莫子儀). Over the course of her time in that film, her feelings toward the latter go from indifference and resentment to warmth and gratitude. The performance skill with which she expressed all this earned her a nomination for the Best Supporting Actress award at the 57th Golden Horse Awards.
Chen admits that there were times that she would wonder why she was never being recognized for her impressive performances, "but I'd forget about the thought, soon after it was occurred to me. I'm an actor, I'll always be an actor, I am supposed to act well, and it doesn't matter whether it is seen or not."