Author | Nanfengchuang Reporter Xiao Yao
from Beijing
I haven’t seen Peng Yuyan for some time.
Therefore, before meeting him, familiar characters kept popping up in my mind, such as "Tang Yu Xiaobao" in childhood memories, the passionate young man in love movies, the brave and vigorous anti-narcotics police and agents in action movies...
But after actually meeting Peng Yuyan, these characters disappeared from him. Including the Hong Kong police superintendent Fang Xing played by Peng Yuyan in the recent New Year's Day movie "Stealth" with Andy Lau and Lam Jiadong.
At first glance, you can easily feel his relaxation and cleanliness.
In Beijing on Christmas Eve, there were still snow stains in the city, but the temperature had begun to rise. Peng Yuyan only wore a sweatshirt with the words "Stealth" printed on it and appeared in the lounge prepared for the interview.
He looked relaxed and at the mercy of the noisy crowd and work arrangements, as relaxed and comfortable as a college student. He also looks like a college student. His body is still tall and strong, his skin is firm and smooth, and he has an innocent and bright smile on his face.
After filming "Dogs" directed by Guan Hu, Peng Yuyan did not film for more than half a year. "I think it is time to make a commercial film."
Our interview time is not long, but it is not a small challenge for reporters to dig out fresh information about the opposite person. Just like the Hong Kong police superintendent Fang Xing played by Peng Yuyan in "Stealth", he must rescue the undercover Lam Jiadong within a limited time, and also obtain the evidence of the drug dealer Lin Zhenan played by Andy Lau, which is not easy.
Similar characters often appeared in Peng Yuyan's previous roles. He was always pushed into an extreme environment and used all his will to mobilize his actions to make impossible tasks possible.
Peng Yuyan is very relaxed. He fixed himself in the same position, facing different people, chatting about similar or different contents. A topic can go on for a long time, and his thoughts drift to childhood, holidays, pottery, small animals... If you give him an hour, he might be able to talk non-stop. As
spoke, his eyes stared intently at his interlocutor. Those characters who strain their nerves and bodies to complete dangerous tasks are completely missing from him. After
ended the interview, I couldn’t help but sigh: From your thinking, speaking habits, to appearance, you are very similar to our "post-90s" peers. Peng Yuyan smiled again: "(Age) is about the same."
In a relatively complex environment, he is a simple person. His words are simple, his smile is simple, and his serious approach to roles and new things is pure and lasting because of his simplicity.
01
"Full preparation makes me feel at ease"
Peng Yuyan would lose weight or get in shape for most of his past roles. While filming the movie "Once Upon a Time in the Tropics," he lost 32 pounds. But this time, although Fang Xing, the Superintendent of the Internet Drug Investigation Division in "Stealth", still looks strong and capable, in fact Peng Yuyan has deliberately gained weight.
Protagonist and producer Andy Lau told Peng Yuyan: Fang Xing should be more "steady" and his aura should not be overshadowed by the drug dealer and the undercover agent played by Jiadong Lam.
There are several fist-fighting scenes in the film, and there are also several scenes with real guns. Peng Yuyan therefore felt that this character needed a little "sense of strength".
"The real gun is very heavy" and has strong recoil. He blurted out several types of guns and picked them up at his fingertips. He emphasized: "He (Fang Xing) and this gun should be very familiar with each other. I can make the audience believe that I can Kill those people (villains)."
He has always been like this. For most characters, the first logic in Peng Yuyan's mind is "how to make the characters believable." And working hard on appearance is the basic skill.
《Roll! The gymnast "Axin" in "Axin" should have extraordinary physique and strength, so practice it. Mixed martial arts requires a real sense of strength, so Lin Siqi's muscles in "Guild Fight" must be completely free of moisture after taking off his clothes. In "The Righteous One", Li Tianran needs to run lightly on the roof, so weight loss becomes necessary.
There is no room for cheating in these preparations, which is what Peng Yuyan is most accustomed to.
Fang Xing in "Stealth" is also a role completed under pressure and challenges. The role of the Superintendent of the Internet Narcotics Investigation Bureau requires not only physical strength, but also brains. Peng Yuyan feels that this is a role that requires a certain age to play. "Only when you reach this role can you enter this state and make yourself believe that you have the ability to catch the drug lord played by Andy Lau."
is continuing. Before he got the role of "Fang Xing" and before he got the script of "Stealth", he started doing homework early, locked himself at home and watched a bunch of documentaries about online virtual currencies, and got to know the "dark web" "Virtual currency" and other "proper nouns", "What Trojans, programming, codes are there in the dark web? Hackers on the dark web can easily find your IP..." New things in the world always attract Peng Yuyan.
Peng Yuyan will not play if he is not fully prepared in advance. This is a creed he has established since he entered the industry. For a long time, he did not have full confidence in his ability to support the role.
When filming "Once Upon a Time: Heroes Have Dreams" in 2014, there was a scene that had been shot for dozens of times but still failed to pass. Peng Yuyan was very frustrated and guilty, and as always he reflected on whether he had not worked hard enough. Because of this sense of crisis and self-vigilance,
requires himself to be fully prepared for each role at all times. "I am afraid that (my role) will not be convincing, or that I have no confidence," so the more prepared he is, the more , For example, after losing ten pounds in a month, when I look in the mirror, I feel that I can lose a little more. Only when I finally arrive at the scene and feel that I can take something out can I feel a little more at ease. "Some people may be able to create better without (a lot of preparation), but if I don't prepare, I think it will be difficult for me to do it."
To some extent, Peng Yuyan has high demands and high standards for himself. Control comes precisely from the full awareness and examination of one's own conditions. For Peng Yuyan, maintaining a good figure that seems easy now actually requires more effort than others. When he was a child, he suffered from asthma, and his mother tried many folk remedies for him. Later, because the medicine affected his hormones, he grew fatter and fatter. When he was 15 years old, Peng Yuyan's weight reached 180 pounds, and he was often laughed at by his peers.
In comparison, Peng Yuyan in reality is a more casual person. "Because everything you encounter every day in life is unpredictable." For example, recently, Peng Yuyan became obsessed with making clay. When he saw some beautiful clay pots and cups, he would buy a bunch of them and give them to his mother or sister or put them at home. The encounter between
and ceramic art was such an accident. One day, Peng Yuyan rode to a primary school on a mountain. In the cafe there, he reunited with a ceramics teacher he had met eight or nine years ago. So, every day after that, Peng Yuyan went there to learn pottery from the teacher, "completely unplanned."
Looking back, it seems difficult to make clear plans for every step of life. I started working as an actor and making movies because my grandma liked it. When Peng Yuyan was a child, her grandmother loved watching movies, and she liked "Fa Ge" Chow Yun-fat, and she also hoped that someone in the family could become a star.
In 2002, 20-year-old Peng Yuyan met the director who he had worked with in commercials when he was a child. The director invited Peng Yuyan to star in the idol drama "White Paper of Love" with Shawn Yue, Rainie Yang and Weiqi Fan. This became the starting point for Peng Yuyan to enter the entertainment industry.
"You may not have seen it." When talking about his early works, he said with an embarrassed smile, but in fact, a "Peng Yuyan" group with more than 6,000 members on Douban posted a post asking "Why do you like Peng Yuyan?" Below, "White Paper on Love" is the first few mentioned answers. Although that was already a question and answer fifteen years ago.
02
"As long as you do it, you can do it too"
"Do you know that many boys in mainland China regard you as their idol?" I told Peng Yuyan that many young men in their twenties and thirties have "hidden in their social platform account avatars or names" Peng Yuyan", "They want to be like you".
"Really?" Peng Yuyan's face showed confusion. It is impossible for him not to know that "Peng Yuyan" is an adjective on the Internet, but at this moment, Peng Yuyan sat in front of me and asked me: "Why? What do they like about me?"
Qiao What’s interesting is that before the interview, I specifically asked a male friend named “xx Peng Yuyan” on WeChat, “Why do you like Peng Yuyan?” In addition to admiration for his figure, I also got the answer: “He is very positive.”
Peng Yuyan smiled, "Actually, what's so difficult? Just practice. I'm not saying I have one more hand than others. I'm the same. I just do it. If you practice, you can do it too." .
For him, the self-discipline and good figure that have been praised all year round originally came from the role, and continued to himself, becoming the bonus of countless training traces.
After twenty years in the industry, almost every role Peng Yuyan has played requires him to "abuse" his body. He once joked in an interview that he was always "looking for hardship" in movies.
's habit of "abusing himself" can give him positive feedback on his character most of the time. For example, the famous film "Roll!" for which he was nominated for the Golden Horse Award for Best Actor. Ashin". At first, no one dared to take the role of Ashin because there were a lot of gymnastics moves in the film, and the director even wanted to hire a professional gymnast to play the role.
In order to play the role of Ashin well, Peng Yuyan practiced gymnastics for more than ten hours a day and only ate boiled vegetables without seasonings for eight months. When filming finally started, my body fat rate was only 6%. The normal body fat rate for Chinese adult men is between 15% and 18%.
Jiang Wen, the director of the movie "The Righteous", described him: "Peng Yuyan can use his soul to command his body. He doesn't care how much damage, laziness and coquettishness his body has."
He has been consistently high for decades. Intense and dedicated self-training and honing allow Peng Yuyan to learn a new skill almost every time he plays a role.
In the 2015 romance movie "I Heard", Peng Yuyan wanted to fall in love with a hearing-impaired girl, so he spent three months learning sign language. When filming "The Fight", I learned mixed martial arts, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai; while filming "The Wind", I rode 120 kilometers every day and got a professional racing driver's license. In order to make a movie, he rode more than 110,000 kilometers, and once rode until his buttocks were on fire.
"I'm just curious. Looking back at my work and roles, I feel that my life is connected. For example, after I worked out for a gymnastics shoot, I shot another one that required me to practice boxing, and then that one The film was delayed for two or three months, so I practiced boxing for an extra two or three months. Unexpectedly, I later used it in "The Fight" and also learned Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It all came together wonderfully, so Everything I shoot now feels like a connection to the past."
The original meaning of self-discipline is self-discipline and supervision, which can essentially be understood as a kind of self-control. What a person can control is his or her body and behavior. In Peng Yuyan’s view, sports and exercise are essentially about controlling one’s body by controlling one’s will and spirit.
For daily training, he arranges 40 minutes for himself every day. If he can do it as required, he will feel more confident throughout the day. "I can complete such a difficult training task, so what else can't be done? ? On the contrary, if I give up after only persisting for 5 minutes in a 40-minute training plan, then I will definitely feel bad about myself and will not have the confidence to do other things. If I can’t control myself, then How can I control those factors in the outside world that I cannot control?"
's "abuse" of the body, in exchange for a sense of reliability and certainty on the spiritual level, is actually a way to temper the heart. "You see, the mental level of those athletes is generally very strong, because what they may face every day and every hour is failure and setbacks. So he must practice repeatedly in the same place every day, non-stop If you fail, suffer setbacks, and then grow, you will gradually develop a very strong heart."
03
"Because I am not a tough guy, I need to act"
However, Peng Yuyan almost without hesitation denied the adjective "tough guy".
"No, no, it is because I am not a tough guy that I need to act (a tough guy) )ah. He smiled sheepishly, "I don't know what I am like either?" "
Are you a more emotional person in reality? I asked.
"Does being emotional mean that you cry easily? He frowned, confused by the adjectives again, "Does liking small animals count?" hey-hey. "
In fact, we have good reasons to believe that Peng Yuyan retains a soft emotional side deep in his heart. In the early days, the clear clarity and simplicity shared by many of his characters came from a soft young heart, such as Tang Yu Xiaobao Pure idealism for love.
Although many directors are reluctant to give up Peng Yuyan's "tough guy" qualities due to his excellent appearance and high self-discipline that he maintains all year round. But in fact, Peng Yuyan has been trying to change over the years. In 2017, consecutive The three movies "Riding the Wind and Waves", "The Legend of Wukong" and "When Will There Be a Bright Moon" are all different from his common tough guy roles.
Director of "When Will There Be a Bright Moon", Xu Anhua believes that the impression Peng Yuyan brought to her is particularly in line with the character in the movie Liu Heizai, the captain of the anti-Japanese guerrillas, “looks like a person in comics or legends, but his emotional expression is very solid. "
Innocence and precipitation are compatible with Peng Yuyan. From his twenties to his forties, he maintained his absolute trust in pure emotions and would not deliberately cover up his inner truth with tenacity and "man" temperament. emotions and expressions.
But he always wants to try to break these things.
In 2021, Eddie Peng played an air-conditioning maintenance worker in the movie "Once Upon a Time in the Tropics" co-operated with Sylvia Chang. He didn't talk much, was thin and stooped, and had gloomy eyes. The character's The motivation for the behavior is no longer out of righteousness or courage, but the shame and atonement of the little person, which is subtly mixed with a hint of dark lust.
In an interview in the same year, Peng Yuyan said, "Many times I need some Stimulation or something that scares me makes me leave my sense of security, and then I will work harder and force myself to learn something," he said. "If not, everyone would be willing to stay in a very comfortable state, but I left When I was in my comfort zone, I was no longer such a person and I was changing myself every day. This is the most interesting place about people. "
Although he talks about leaving a sense of security, in fact, a considerable part of this consciousness comes from the insecurity deep in Peng Yuyan's heart. He is always "pulling" himself up to a more solid foundation. Different roles gave him nourishment and whipping.
In a scene during the filming of "Emergency Rescue" in 2020, Peng Yuyan needed to be burned by fire. The 500-degree bubble fire hit his body and face. Although he was covered with fire-retardant paste, But the smoke would fill his nose and mouth. In order to prevent his lungs from being burned out, he could only hold his breath.
But when the fire really caught up with him, he still fell into a great panic, and his heart was pounding, "If you don't have clothes, , I have already melted." At that moment, thinking of the people he loved and the unfinished things, mother, sister... fear also burned Peng Yuyan. He was not fearless.
But back to the actor's belief, he He understands more clearly that this is what the real salvage team does in reality, "fire and water".
's growth in the character is a surprise brought to him by the movie. He will not mistakenly think that he is different from those The character is equally fearless, brave, and determined in his goals, but the boy in his heart is always willing to constantly examine himself, constantly reflect on and adjust his relationship with the world.
This time, Fang Xing in "Stealth" can also be seen more clearly Personal growth line. "In the beginning (Fang Xing) should be relatively calm and willing to work hard, hoping to achieve a certain level in his career and be recognized by his boss or society," Peng Yuyan said, "but later when his teammates sacrificed Later, he gradually discovered that the world was actually very big, and it turned out that the experiences of those predecessors in the old world could be learned."
Fang Xing at the beginning of the movie does seem a little impulsive, firmly believing in his own choices and methods. In the second half of the film, Fang Xing begins to reflect more on the involvement of emotions in the execution of justice. The world of black and white, good and evil is tricky and painful precisely because of the complex entanglement of human nature.
Growing up through partial denial of oneself and strengthening oneself through interaction with the world is Peng Yuyan's way of survival both inside and outside the show. His keenness towards different lives and lives urges him to always be curious and keep learning. The boyishness, bravery and purity shown in his appearance and temperament actually come from his conscious protection of his own keen sensibility.
The real Peng Yuyan is actually much simpler than his characters. He simply completes the tasks set for himself every day, without elevating them to hard work and inspiration. Simply believe in the lives and feelings of the characters, and use all the "stupid methods" you can to get close to them.
In recent years, Peng Yuyan has spent most of his time in Taipei and Hong Kong. When he is not working, he often goes hiking and skiing in places with few people, and he is not afraid of losing control. In 2023, he went to Switzerland to skate alone for more than ten days. He was the only one throughout the whole process, and he got lost because of the unfamiliarity of the place and the language barrier.
In April 2022, Peng Yuyan, who was trapped at home, helped fans choose lipstick colors and clothes, and became a hot search topic. Someone else met him while doing nucleic acid tests. He appeared in the team lazily and relaxedly without any makeup or hair, wearing a mask and a skateboard.
On today's Chinese Internet, "Eddie Peng" is still an adjective, just like "Liu Yifei" among girls, used to refer to herself humorously or to give friendly compliments. As a person who single-handedly influenced the aesthetics and Internet language of a generation, Peng Yuyan deconstructed it all with simple thoughts.
When saying goodbye, he stood up to drink water and prepare for the next interview seamlessly. He said to me: "It's not that difficult. If you want, you can do it if you practice. Come on."
-end-
Editing | Mingting
Typesetting | Leyan
Produced by Nanfeng Window New Media
Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited
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