In 2018, Fan was involved in a tax evasion scandal, resulting in a CN¥883 million (US$127 million) fine and her blacklisting in mainland China. [6][7][8][9] She returned to acting with a cameo in Korean TV show Insider (2022), followed by a starring role in film Green Night (2023).[10]
Early life
Fan was born and raised in the coastal city of Yantai, Shandong. Her grandfather, Fan Jie, was a general in the naval air force, and her grandmother gave her the Chinese character bing, or “ice,” to honor the family’s ties to the sea.[11] Fan grew up watching her father, Fan Tao, a pop singer, perform at regional competitions. Her mother, Zhang Chuanmei, was a dancer and an actress. Both were party committee members and served as cadres in the cultural division of the local port authority.[12][13] Fan has a younger brother Fan Chengcheng, who was a member of boy group Nine Percent and NEXT.[14]
In 1995, during her second year at high school, Fan was involved a car accident and spent three months recuperating in a hospital, where she watched the Taiwanese drama The Empress of the Dynasty, starring Angela Pan as Wu Zetian. The drama gave Fan the dream of becoming an actress.[12] Unable to advance to her senior year due to the accident while unwilling to repeat the second year, Fan applied to a performance school, Shanghai Xie Jin-Hengtong School of Arts.[15][16]
Career
1996–2006: Early work and breakthrough
Fan debuted in the television series Powerful Woman and played minor roles for two years, before gaining recognition in 1999 for her supporting role as Jin Suo in the first two seasons of the Chinese television series My Fair Princess, adapted from the novel by Taiwanese writer Chiung Yao.[17] Fan was recommended by Hong Kong actress Leanne Liu to join the cast.[18]
In 2003, she starred in Cell Phone, which became China's highest-grossing film of the year and earned her the Hundred Flowers Award for Best Actress. Fan signed an eight-year contract with Chiung Yao's company, which produced My Fair Princess. However, as the company had yet to establish any branches in mainland China, many mainland Chinese television advertising firms had to make calls to Taiwan for negotiations, resulting in a waste of time and effort. When Fan and her mother tried to contract, Chiung Yao's company asked for CN¥1 million in compensation; eventually the court ordered Fan to pay CN¥200,000 because the contract was illegal due to her age.[19]
Fan left Huayi Brothers in February 2007 and started her own Fan Bingbing Studio. She starred in eight films in 2007, winning Best Supporting Actress at the 44th Golden Horse Awards for her role in The Matrimony.[23] That year, her studio made its first television production, Rouge Snow (2008), adapted from the novel of the same name. Fan played the starring role in the production, portraying a poor girl who fights for freedom against fate after being sold to a wealthy and influential clan.[24] In the same year, Fan starred in crime drama film Shinjuku Incident and was praised by critics for her performance.[25] Fan featured in historical action film Bodyguards and Assassins, which earned her a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards.[26]
For the first half of 2012, Fan attended many fashion shows in Paris.[33][34][35] On 16 May, she attended the opening ceremony of the 65th Cannes Film Festival as the only East Asian global spokesperson on behalf of L'Oréal Paris.[36]Forbes ranked Fan third on the 2012 Forbes China Celebrity 100 List based on her success in that year.[37] In the film Double Xposure, which was released in China on 29 September,[38] she portrays a girl who, after suffering trauma during childhood, experiences visual hallucinations after witnessing her father kill her mother. Most film critics praised Fan's performance,[39][40] and she won Best Actress at the 2013 Huading Awards.[41] The film was a financial success, with a domestic gross of more than CN¥100 million,[42] which broke the box office record for a domestic art film in China. On 12 December, Fan appeared in Lost in Thailand, in which she did an unpaid cameo so as to "help" her first-time filmmaker friend, Xu Zheng. The film broke the box office record for Chinese films in China to become one of the highest-grossing Chinese films of all time.[43]
In 2013, Fan appeared as Dr. Wu's assistant, Wu Jiaqi, in the mainland Chinese version of Iron Man 3, which was released on 1 May.[44][45] The same year, she starred alongside Aarif Rahman in the romantic comedy One Night Surprise, which aired on Chinese Valentine's Day. The low-budget film became a commercial success and received positive reviews.[46] On 9 December 2013, the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group's B2C business Taobao announced that Fan topped the list of the most valuable celebrities for boosting online business and said that Fan influenced approximately US$74 million in sales on its ecommerce website.[47] On 22 December, Fan received the Best Actress Award and the Hottest Figure Award at the Baidu Hot Ceremony.[48] In 2014, Fan portrayed the mutant Blink (Clarice Ferguson) in the American superhero film X-Men: Days of Future Past.[49] She also announced that she has a four-film contract with 20th Century Fox, yet she has not appeared in another X-Men film since.[50] The film was released globally and resulted in increased international fame and recognition for Fan.[51][52] On 31 May, Barbie announced the launch of the Fan Bingbing Celebrity Specialty doll in Shanghai.[53]Louis Vuitton also chose Fan as the first Asian actress to be provided with a specially tailored dress for their red carpet.[citation needed]
In the series The Empress of China, Fan portrays the titular character Wu Zetian, the only female emperor in Chinese history.[52] The 82-episode TV series was broadcast on Hunan Television from 21 December 2014 to 5 February 2015, and recorded the highest ratings for the year.[54] The same year, she starred in wuxia fantasy film The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom.[55] In 2015, Fan joined the China Central Television (CCTV) variety show as a judge in Amazing Chinese and as a contestant in the reality television show Challenger's Alliance.[56] Fan won the Best Actress award at the 1st Berlin Chinese Film Festival for her role in the film.[57] She was ranked fourth on Forbes World's Highest-Paid Actresses list for 2015.[58]
Since 2018, Fan's career has been derailed by a tax evasion scandal. On May 10, 2018, Feng Xiaogang posted on Weibo a concept poster for Cell Phone 2, a sequel to Fan's breakout film Cell Phone (2003). On May 27, former CCTV host Cui Yongyuan, who has a feud with Cell Phone (2003) due to its insinuations about his real life, posted on Weibo photos of a contract where Fan is paid CN¥10 million. On May 28, Cui further alleged that another actor had signed two contracts for a four-day film shoot—one for CN¥10 million and the other for CN¥50 million—pocketing a total of CN¥60 million. Due to the smaller contract's amount matching Fan's revealed contract from the previous day, many incorrectly believed Cui referred to the same person with two days' revelations and was thus accusing Fan of tax evading. On May 29, Fan's studio denied the "yin-yang contracts" accusation.[68][69] On June 3, China's tax authorities announced that they would investigate Fan's suspected case of tax evasion in light of Cui's posts.[70][71] Cui offered his help to the investigation, but clarified that the CN¥60 million contract did not involve Fan. He also apologized to Fan for subjecting her to the investigation, stating that his targets were Feng Xiaogang and Liu Zhenyun, the director and the writer of Cell Phone.[72]
Questions, concerns, and rumors about Fan's whereabouts grew when she was not seen after a last public appearance on 1 July 2018, and a lack of activity on social media after 23 July.[6][73] In August 2018, Fan's manager Jersey Chong refuted the widely spread rumor that Fan had been arrested.[74] On October 3, Xinhua News Agency announced that Fan was ordered to pay about CN¥883 million in taxes and penalties for her tax evasion. On the same day Fan broke her months-long silence with an apology statement on social media.[75][73] Fan's case also triggered a tax audit crackdown and reforms in China's entertainment industry. In December 2018, a group of cultural and film industry representatives anonymously issued an open letter to Premier Li Keqiang, questioning the State Taxation Administration's taxation methods.[76] According to Xinhua News Agency, from October 2018 to the end of the year, taxpayers in the entertainment industry "conducted self-inspections," and CN¥11.747 billion in taxes were declared.[77]
Since the tax scandal, Fan has been effectively blacklisted in mainland China, where her films and television works are prohibited from being released, such as the crime film The Perfect Blue, directed by Cao Baoping, and the costume drama The Legend of Ba Qing (aka Win the World).[78] Fan made attempts at a comeback in Mainland China with varying degrees of success, with her publicity sometimes censored or shadowbanned on the Chinese internet. On April 22, 2019, she attended the IQIYI Ninth Anniversary Gala in Beijing,[79] with photos posted on her Instagram the next day. This was her first public event after the tax scandal; however, by the time she arrived, the media session had already ended. Her closed-door session included only industry VIPs, with no journalists present. Fan was in attendance at the Shanghai Beauty Summit on 12 July[80] and the 12th China Cosmetic Summit on 22 July.[81] On 27 September, Fan posted on Weibo photos of her attending a promotional event for FAW Hongqi E-HS9. However, she was conspicuously missing from the list of celebrity guests in the car company's publicity. She later deleted the post about Hongqi. On November 17, Fan presented an award at the "2020 Ellemen Film Hero Awards Ceremony" for the animated film Legend of Deification (2020).
Unlike many other convicted celebrities in China, after the tax scandal, Fan was allowed to maintain a social media presence, which she parlayed into a successful career running her personal brand, Fan Beauty. Founded not long before her tax scandal, Fan Beauty's GMV surpassed 300 million RMB in 2021, 850 million RMB in 2022, and 1.1 billion RMB in 2023.[82][83]
On 13 May 2010, Fan wore a "Dragon Robe" on the red carpet of the 63rd Cannes Film Festival.[101][102] The dress, co-designed by Chinese designer Laurence Hsu and Fan herself, features two leaping dragons and crashing waves on the hem, in the bright yellow color that was exclusively used by emperors in ancient China. The dress was collected by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London on 12 March 2012.[103] Laurence Hsu announced that the dress shown at the museum is a modified version of the original, which was bought by Madame Tussauds.[104] On 11 May 2011, Fan wore a crane dress on the red carpet at the opening ceremony of the 64th Cannes Film Festival.[105] On the red carpet of the opening ceremony of the 65th Cannes Film Festival, Fan wore an elegant pale strapless gown designed by her friend Christopher Bu, decorated with bright floral designs and stories about the Four Beauties of ancient China.[106] Inspired by a porcelain vase, the ancient vibe of her dress was complemented by her hairstyle, which made her look like a young maiden in the Tang dynasty.
On July 3, 2023, Fan closed the Georges Hobeika's Haute Couture Autumn/Winter 2023 show at Paris Haute Couture Week.[134] On October 2, 2023, Fan closed the closed out the catwalk for the Mugler's Spring/Summer 2024 womenswear show.[135] In April 2024, Fan was invited as a special guest at the Songkran Festival in Thailand.[136] On 27 May 2024, it was announced that Fan was appointed as Malacca's tourism ambassador, she toured the Malaysian state from 14 June till 16 June.[137][138]
Personal life
Relationships
From 2004 to 2006, Fan dated actor Wang Xuebing after co-starring in the 2004 TV drama Jian Lin Tian Xia. Fan took a nine-month hiatus from acting for him.[139]
In 2013, romantic rumors surfaced about Fan and Aarif Rahman after they filmed One Night Surprise. In August 2014, while working together again on The Empress of China, the TV series produced by Fan, the two were photographed sharing the same hotel room at night.[140] Fan suggested on Kangsi Coming that they broke up around the end of 2014, while Rahman indirectly confirmed on S-style Show with Dee Hsu that Fan and he had been in a relationship.[141][142]
On 29 May 2015, it was announced on Li Chen's social media that he and Fan were dating. On 16 September 2017, they were engaged after he proposed to her at her birthday party.[143] They announced their separation on 27 June 2019.[144] Fan explained in 2020 that she left him to protect him from the fallout of her tax scandal, which had affected both Li's career and her brother Fan Chengcheng's.[145]
In 2022, Fan began a relationship with Guo Yanfeng, a former PLA officer who served as vice chairman of Gaosheng Wealth Group, a Zhongzhi-affiliated firm, before becoming a business partner in her brand Fan Beauty. The two parted ways at the end of 2023.[146][147]
Others
In 2024, Fan moved to Hong Kong after reportedly acquiring residency through an investment immigration program.[148]
^Misovic, Tijana (22 September 2023). "Nežna je noć". Harper's Bazaar Srbija. Archived from the original on 19 October 2023. Retrieved 11 October 2023.
^"范冰冰成LV首位亚洲形象大使" [Fan Bingbing becomes LV's first Asian image ambassador]. MadisonBoom (in Chinese). 10 December 2012. Archived from the original on 25 March 2024.
^范冰冰代言酩悦香槟:“范爷”形象点亮外滩 [Fan Bingbing endorses Moët & Chandon: "Fan" image lights up the Bund]. Sina Style (in Chinese). 12 April 2013. Archived from the original on 25 March 2024.
^"LV为范冰冰度身定制戛纳晚礼服-奢侈品频道" [LV tailor-made Cannes evening dress for Fan Bingbing-Luxury Channel]. Sohu (in Chinese). 21 May 2013. Archived from the original on 25 March 2024. 从"龙袍"、"鹤裙"再到去年的"china瓷",范冰冰每次出场戛纳都能带来一阵惊艳。此次亮相戛纳,她却低调很多。值得一提的是,这是路易•威登第一次为亚洲女星度身打造红毯礼服。 [From "dragon robe", "crane skirt" to last year's "china porcelain", Fan Bingbing can bring a surprise every time she appears in Cannes. During this appearance in Cannes, she was much more low-key. It is worth mentioning that this is the first time Louis Vuitton has tailored a red carpet dress for an Asian actress.]
^"LV全新廣告 范冰冰與超模攜手演繹經典Alma手袋" [LV's new advertising Fan Bingbing and supermodel work together to interpret the classic Alma handbag]. ELLE Taiwan (in Chinese (Taiwan)). 16 April 2013. Archived from the original on 25 March 2024.
^"突发 - LVMH旗下娇兰宣布范冰冰为全球代言人" [Breaking - Guerlain, a subsidiary of LVMH, announces Fan Bingbing as global spokesperson]. FashionNetwork China. 24 August 2020. Archived from the original on 25 March 2024. Retrieved 25 March 2024.
^Kim, Ji-hye (27 September 2022). "김민하X판빙빙, 아시아콘텐츠어워즈서 라이징스타상·인기상 수상" [Kim Min-ha and Fan Bing-bing win the Rising Star Award and Popularity Award at the Asia Content Awards] (in Korean). SBS Entertainment News. Archived from the original on 3 October 2022. Retrieved 3 October 2022 – via Naver.
^Yang, Yong-eun (14 October 2022). "제17회 2022 아시아모델페스티벌 인 의정부', 14일부터 사흘간 의정부에서 개최" [The 17th 2022 Asian Model Festival in Uijeongbu', held in Uijeongbu for three days from the 14th]. Straight News (in Korean). Archived from the original on 15 October 2022. Retrieved 15 October 2022.
In 2010, the list started to include Chinese celebrities born in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other countries. Prior to that it only included celebrities born in mainland China.