TV series "My Altay" became popular, many people remembered the red-haired, outspoken and brave Kazakh girl "Token", and also remembered the actor who played Token, the Kazakh actress Alima from Altay. .
Token’s unexpected popularity made Alima unable to react for a moment. This actress, who graduated from the Shanghai Theater Academy, left her hometown very early, has been filming for more than ten years, and likes to hide behind her characters, has recently become Extremely busy, with filming appointments and interviews coming one after another. Alima was a little uncomfortable at first, "I don't want to consume this role or this drama too much." Later, her thoughts gradually changed, "You may only get some good dramas after you have some exposure. Everyone To see you, they go hand in hand," she said.
This kind of "being seen" also includes her hometown Altay. What impressed Alima deeply was that she attended the Cannes Film Festival with the crew of "My Altay". When the words "My Altay" appeared on the big screen at the Palais des Cinemas, the main venue of Cannes, she burst into tears. , I simply couldn’t restrain my pride in my hometown.
Recently, Alima accepted an exclusive interview with Nanzhou Entertainment . The following is her self-report:
01 Token
When I first received this drama, it was in the confidentiality stage. I didn’t know the script. I only knew Li Juan’s "My Altay" For this essay, I received a group training from twenty or thirty friends at that time - when recruiting actors, there will be a group training, saying that there is a drama about to start shooting, so I asked my agent to take care of it. I sent my information and was recommended by a sister (actor Reyza). After seeing it, the director thought it seemed quite suitable and asked me to record two audition clips. The test scene I recorded was my first scene in the whole play - I went to the canteen to find Mulati and asked him to go home with me. After auditioning this scene, the director quickly settled on it. After I got the script, it was time for a round-up reading. We went to Urumqi for a round-up reading, and then the whole image of the character Token came into my life.
I like this character very much. He is very pure, dares to love and hate, and is also kind and direct. These are the character traits that I particularly like. And what I think is very rare is that Token is actually a character who has suffered a lot in the play, but she shows optimism and strength. I think this is also a mentality we want to convey, and it is also a central idea of the whole drama - no matter how bumpy life is, we must live it brightly.
Maybe my personality in real life is the same as Token's, I am relatively direct. After being polished by society, I have become a little better. Sometimes being too direct is not a particularly good thing, but now I want to pursue my own directness more and more. Be a little more sincere and real.
Many people like the female friendship between Token and Wenxiu. For Token, Wenxiu’s biggest attraction is that she says what Token wants to say but can’t. In my opinion, Wenxiu is a very educated person who has read a lot of books. I want my daughters to be like this. With many aspects added together, they will gradually become best friends.
Regarding when Token fell in love with Chao Ge, this is a blank in the play. Because Token is not the main main character, many places are left blank. But when I went to talk to the director, I said that I hope there is a good reason to convince me why Token remarried Chao Ge after the first anniversary of Mulati's death. My value is that if I fall into an unhappy marriage and the family makes me miserable, I might be able to take a two-year reprieve. I see that when female friends around me go through similar things, they will wait for two or three years before starting again. Token's situation is different. She has lost her husband, has two children, and many things will tie her down. I said there must be a good reason to tell me why Token must be with Chao Ge? He is a very attentive person who takes good care of me in many small details.Then it has to show, right? I can't tell you out of thin air. I have to let the audience see that she doesn't just want a divorce. I think this family is not good and I want to marry into another family. I think Token is not such a person. Token has his own ideas.
I was on the plane at that time, and I kept asking myself this question, why do I like Chao Ge? When I thought about the hand cream plot, I thought it should be done. The next step was to talk to the director. After the director heard this, he thought it was a good point and added it to the play.
At the end, Token is going to the county town with Chao Ge. She has actually experienced a huge change in her mental state. At the beginning, I just wanted to remarry and leave this family quickly. But when I really wanted to leave, I actually had mixed feelings. It is a very uncomfortable state for a person to say goodbye to her past, because not only is she saying goodbye to her husband's family, she also has ten years of youth left in this family. I think the hardest thing for people to change is habits. Token is already used to this family, used to washing clothes, used to cooking, used to this daily life. She just wanted to say, I have to think about my future, I have to think about my child's future, and now that I have a boy who loves me so much, it would be great for me and him to start a family together. But he didn't stop me from continuing to grieve for the family I was leaving.
When the filming was finally completed, we were all very sad, because there might be no possibility for this group of people to make such a movie together in this life. And when I left, I also had to say goodbye to my hometown, and to say goodbye to some things about my childhood, including my memories, including some of my things. There are a lot of emotions mixed in, which makes it even more uncomfortable. I kept crying, and my colleague kept handing me tissues, and handed me half a pack of tissues. Including my hair, I originally had black hair when I joined the group, and Token had red hair. My black hair was dyed black, so I had to bleach it. It took me 9 or 10 hours to get the final look. That red color everyone sees. When it was finally finished, I had to dye the hair back to black because I had other work to do later. I posted on WeChat Moments at the time, saying: After I dyed Alima’s hair back, I officially said goodbye to Token.
02 Alima
Because I am not married and have no children, Token’s affection for my children is the love my mother has for me. I was a premature baby. My mother gave birth to me when I was more than 7 months old. Many functions of my body were not yet perfect. My mother said that my hands were wrinkled like duck webs at that time, so I was so small. My mother loved me very much at that time. Kazakh people like to use small animals to describe their babies. "Bot" means a little camel, and "Fire Totoro" means a pony. They use these small animals to describe their children. I remember I was already so big, almost 20 years old. When I went home, my parents would still call me "Fire Totoro". So Token's emotional relationship with the two children relies on my parents' feelings for me and then expresses them.
The person who plays Token’s mother in the drama is my mother. At that time, I was filming a movie called "Chang'an" in Xi'an, and my mother accompanied me to Xi'an. I had a very heavy role in that play. There were 100 scenes in a script, and I had 96. My mother supervised me to eat two eggs every day. There was a scene in that movie that had a mother's part. It happened that my mother went to the scene that day and was seen by the director. The director said to the producer, take a look and see if Alima's mother can play her mother? Then my mother became a special actress. My mother is very serious and makes me do my lines every day.
When it was time for "My Altay", my mother also returned to Altay. After I returned home, the assistant director told me that we haven't found the person to play your mother yet. Was your mother the one who played your previous role? I said yes, and he said, no, you ask mom to come over and perform the show again for three days.Just like that, at the beginning, I just talked about my mother. I said okay, okay, and I said I would talk to my mother. Just after I finished speaking, I said that grandma didn’t find the right one, and then I asked grandma, does she have any words? At first, he told me that he didn’t have anything to say and that he could just sit there. I said that I would call my second aunt over. But when the second aunt came, she had something to say. Then she said that the father was not suitable even after we searched for him, so he left my house like this. All the relatives came to greet me. My family members are not professional actors. They are pretty good if they can remember the lines, and they also need to be emotional. Whenever the person in front of them doesn’t say something, they will say, it’s your turn! Then you have to do it all over again, because it’s on camera. So many jokes were made.
When I was a child, my mother did not want me to embark on the path of literature and art. She always tried to change me. Even when she was pregnant, she was not willing to stay in the work unit because she was afraid that I would develop musical cells. She ran to a big tree very far away from the work unit. Sitting under the tree and reading a book, he wanted me to read more books in the future, saying that prenatal education during this period of pregnancy is very important. As a result, when I was 8 months old, I started dancing when I heard the music, and I was so excited. My mother was furious, no exaggeration at all. She said she was hypotensive and her blood pressure went up the moment she saw me. When I was more than two years old, a piece of music that was very popular at that time would be played at the door of our department store. As long as I heard this music, no matter what I was doing, I would stop and finish the dance first, and then wait until the music ended. Walk. My father would hit me with small strips on the ground to scare me and let me go, but I didn't care about it at all and continued to dance with great enthusiasm. My mother was just admiring my dancing and getting angry at the same time. She was admiring it because she thought the dance moves were very beautiful. She was angry because, why didn’t the 8-month prenatal training have any effect? Later, I couldn't control it at all. Controlling it again and again seemed to further encourage me to want to do this, and in the end I fully supported it.
I remember that when I returned to Xinjiang after graduating from Shanghai Theater Academy, I felt a little uncomfortable because there were not so many acting opportunities in Xinjiang. When I wanted to leave, my mother said, don't sit here and whine. If you want to leave, pack your things now and leave tomorrow. You can rush when you are young. My mother said a lot of very philosophical words to me. I remember one time when we went to a pastoral area, my mother took me to milk a cow. She said, go and learn how to milk a cow. What if you want to play a role in a pastoral area in the future? She said, if you don’t know how to live, how can you act? It was really at that time that I realized that when milking cows, you have to first use the calf to trick the mother and let it relax, so that it can produce milk. Then the calf is bumped on its head, and the mother's milk will come out. Then quickly put the calf Take the cow away and milk it quickly at that time, otherwise the cow will quickly lock up the milk.
I will have a few more dramas next, one is "Chang'an", one is a movie about deaf-mute people, in which I played a Bai girl, and two love dramas, which I will share with you one after another. Meet. Because of Token, many people know me, Alima, but I don’t think I can do anything with this drama. It’s just that maybe the agency will be better at promoting the drama. In the past, I had to promote this. Actor, everyone will ask, who is this? What have you acted in? Now there is a masterpiece called "My Altay". But I don’t really want to change my status of taking on roles or working in the future. I’m still the same as before, that is, I just take on more good roles. I don’t want to be too specific about my type. I still hope that everyone can treat me like a normal actor.
03 Altay
I said that I went back to my hometown to film with a sense of mission. That sense of mission is to let more people know about this place and the Kazakh people. Of course, my power is very, very small, but if everyone thinks so, it will definitely be visible to everyone. So when we finally took "My Altay" to Cannes, when the words "My Altay" appeared on the big screen of the Film Palace, I burst into tears and couldn't help but feel proud of my hometown.
Another deep feeling I have is that I think this drama is very different. In the so-called era stories we have seen before, everyone always left, stayed away, and dispersed, but this drama is The ending is that everyone came back, and they built and developed Altay around it. In some way, we all reached some kind of reconciliation with our hometown and our parents, and then found our new selves. .
My own situation is actually the same. It’s not that I have to go back to my hometown now and what I will do for my hometown, but I filmed a movie outside called “My Altay”, which let more people know about it, including me. Use my little bit of fame now to promote my hometown. These are also a connection between me and my hometown. It does not mean that this place has nothing to do with me after I leave there. It is impossible. It is the place where I was born and raised.
What you have seen now in "My Altay" is a relatively beautiful part. In fact, Winter Pasture is still a very severe, cruel, and cold environment, and it is also very inconvenient for children to go to school in Winter Pasture. In the past, relatives often stayed at my house because their children had to go to school and would go back during the holidays. My grandma's house also has children from other families, that is, their parents went to Winter Pasture, which is quite far away, and they want their children to go to school in the county. Of course, urban life is much more convenient, so many people will choose to live in the city, and the nomadic life is naturally not as common as before. I think the audience is discerning. You can't say that after seeing the beauty in "My Altay", you have forgotten its cruel side. You have to accept the bad side of things so that you can better carry the good parts.
Yilan
editor-in-chief Chen Lingling
