The Dome Studio (山下学堂) is a new performance school/studio founded in 2017 by prominent Chinese actors Chen Kun and Zhou Xun and director Chen Guo Fu, with the intent of encouraging actors and those who are interested in performance to grow and continue to refine their craft. As part of their promotional campaign, the Dome Studio started a series called “An Actor’s Sense of Happiness” and leveraged the three founders’ extensive celebrity networks to invite various well respected actors to share their perspective, which includes Jackie Chan, Tong Li Ya, as well as veteran actresses Mei Ting (the empress in NiF2), Liu Min Tao (Wang Kai's mom in NiF), Jiang Xin, and Huang Lu.
Liu Hao Ran has been the youngest (by far) to be interviewed. When the transcript (and the audio) was released, Liu Hao Ran was filming in the snowy mountains of Xinjiang for Novoland: Eagle Flag, and it had just been revealed by one of his teachers at the Central Academy of Drama on Weibo that he had been filming night scenes every single day in the freezing cold. The monologue was first recorded, and then later transcribed into text by The Dome Studio. You will notice the first part of his response is the same as what he had written in The Eye of the Storm’s preface.
I consider myself to be a very lucky person. In high school, I successfully participated in my very first film. When I hadn’t even completed my gao kao yet, I received opportunities and attention that other actors only obtain after putting in a lot more time and effort. At not yet twenty, I had the team of my dreams, and I have been able to take on many great roles.
Before becoming an actor, I was someone who could easily find happiness. I could derive happiness from playing a basketball game with friend, from successfully putting together a lego model, and from buying a basket of mangosteens and not finding any spoiled ones. Even spacing out for twenty minutes could make me feel happy – my sense of happiness was extremely easy to come by.
At the end of 2015 through the middle of 2016, I became more ingrained in acting as a profession. I played bright and sunshiny characters in Beijing Love Story and With You, but I also wanted to take on different kinds of roles for the audience, and I found myself changing quite a bit.
I began to have many different projects to film – The Founding of An Army, The Legend of the Demon Cat, Nirvana In Fire 2, and Detective Chinatown. And as a result, I no longer had time to play basketball, or to meet friends for drinks and dinner. I no longer had as many moments that I could derive happiness from, and I slowly began to realize that my ability to feel happiness began to decrease as well.
It is an extremely scary thing if one can no longer feel happiness. One day, I was spacing out in my hotel room after filming, and I suddenly started questioning myself. Why was it so hard for me to find happiness now? When was the last time I was able to derive happiness from something? I thought about it for a while, and concluded that it was when I was able to show the director on the set of The Legend of the Demon Cat that I had successfully lost 20 kg.
When I was filming Nirvana in Fire 2 as well, Xiao Ping Jing’s transformation as a character was quite challenging for me. While preparing for one of the crying scenes, I was very down, as I was worried I wouldn’t be able to properly convey the sadness and grief needed for the scene. I also suffer from dry eye syndrome, so I was very stressed out.
I read the script over and over again, and kept trying to put myself in the character’s shoes and understand how he would have felt in that instance. I pushed myself to the limit, and when filming began, I was able to fully immerse myself in the scene, and when I felt the emotions well up, the tears came out as well.
We spent five days and over twenty takes on those crying scenes. So I cried daily, to the point where I ran out of tears towards the end, and my eyes were constantly swollen. When all of my efforts paid off and I successfully overcame one of my biggest weaknesses – crying scenes – I was happy.
Also, when we were filming Detective Chinatown 2, time was of the essence, and we all felt the pressure. In the early morning, all of the actors would get in one van, and we would spent twelve hours daily filming. At the celebration dinner when we had officially wrapped up filming, brother Si Cheng thanked all of the actors and production team members for all of their hard work. And at that moment, I also felt happy.
Previously, my happiness was derived from the small moments of life. Now I’m discovering, as an actor, it’s not that I can no longer find happiness – it’s that my idea of happiness now is much more complex and layered. I cannot go back to the days where I could hang out with my friends and classmates everyday playing basketball and catching up, nor can I live the life of a regular twenty year old young adult.
I’m spending every day working hard, and putting a lot of thought into the roles that I take in the hopes that I can also mature through these roles. Sometimes after spending fifteen or so days filming, I will suddenly feel a burst of happiness. Being able to obtain happiness from my own hard work brings me more joy, because I can treasure these moments for several years, if not for a lifetime.
That is the actor’s sense of happiness – because it’s not easy to come by, I will treasure those moments of joy even more.
