Jiang Wen

Family

Jiang Wen's father is Jiang Hongqi, a veteran of the Korean War. Described as taciturn and bookish, he played a minor role in his son's 2011 film, Let the Bullets Fly. Jiang's mother Gao Yang — “a cheerful, extroverted woman” — worked as a piano teacher. Jiang Wen is the eldest son in the family; in addition to his younger brother, Jiang Wu, he has a younger sister, Jiang Huan.

Close to his family, Jiang has a deep bond with his parents: whenever he is on site for shooting or acting, he arranges for them to come to his workplace so that he can spend time with them. Each movie he makes, he saves the best seats for them and asks for their opinions. Even on artistic composition, he sometimes resorts to them for advice. It was his parents' endorsement on the original novel of A Native of Beijing in New York that propelled Jiang into his performance. Later, during the filming of his first feature film, In the Heat of the Sun, Jiang again considered their evaluation of Xia Yu, before settling on him as the leading actor.

Relationship

Hibiscus Town was the movie that first catapulted Jiang, a then-obscure university student, into fame and popularity. His partner in the film was Liu Xiaoqing, he was 23 and she was 31, and they were passionately involved during the shooting, making a sensational news in the entertainment industry at that time. Reportedly, the crew was very supportive of their relationship. After successive appearances in Hibiscus Town and Red Sorghum, Jiang was gradually garnering his own reputation, and yet in the face of Liu Xiaoqing, who was already an internationally acclaimed actress, he was still the fledging junior. Even after years, Liu Xiaoqing never admitted this romance herself, only claimed that the media pressure was so suffocating that she once conceived going abroad. Years later at one ceremony, Director Xie Jin finally verified this rumor, revealing that they had actually lived together for three years. In 1994, they broke up in an amicable manner, and have managed to keep alive their friendship to this day.

Jiang and his French ex-wife Sandrine Chenivesse first encountered each other at an artistic celebrity gathering in 1995: he was sitting alone at a corner, staring blankly at space, so she went up introducing herself to him, and that was the beginning of their romance. Chenivesse was a Doctor of Anthropology at the University of Paris, who happened to be researching topics in philosophy and Taoism in China. In the autumn of 1997, they registered for marriage in Paris and had a daughter together, but they remained low-key on media until their appearance on the red carpet of the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. In 2005, Chenivesse announced divorce with Jiang after coming back from France with their daughter, the main factor of the divorce being their long-distance separation.

In 2001, during the filming of Warriors of Heaven and Earth, famous actress Zhao Wei introduced Zhou Yun, a cast member from the same movie, to Jiang. Zhou Yun, a laureate Miss Beauty of Wen Zhou Beauty Pageant, was mesmerized by the City of Beijing and decided to pursue an acting career there, so she entered the same school with Jiang, the Central Academy of Drama. Graduating from the same school and disciplined by the same mentor, Jiang and Zhou, despite a 15-year age gap, shared the same passion and interest. Later, Jiang recommended Zhou to the cast of The Music Box, but each left the crew after a creative difference between Jiang and the director Chen Yifei. Their successive withdrawals spawned much speculations about the ambiguous relationship between them, and rumors started to spread. Once, when Zhou was studying a character at Jiang's studio, she happened on him drinking and sulking for missing his daughter. When Jiang sobered up, he opened up to her about his history with the French ex-wife. It was when Jiang was confiding to her that she realized her affection for him and decided to stay with him. At the end of 2005, they were officially married, and now they have two sons.^[9]

Film

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Television

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