On December 2022, 12, the last episode of the TV series "Daughter Back" aired. Mei Ting, who was on tour of the drama "The Seventh Day", was sitting in a hotel in Suzhou, looking at the cold and calm winter color of Taihu Lake outside the window, and her thoughts went back to a year ago. At that time, "The Daughter Who Came Back" had just started, and the rehearsal of the drama "Red and Black" was in full swing. There was no time to accompany the child for a few more days, and on the first day of the new year, Mei Ting flew back to the crew. On that day, there were very few people on the plane and it was quiet. Mei Ting looked out the window, coveting the moment when the bustle and hustle and bustle were isolated.

"Busy" is a footnote to Mei Ting's thirty-year acting career. But on the busy back, Mei Ting prefers to call it the actress's "lucky". From the age of 19 to acting, the first TV series "Blood Child's Heart" caused a great sensation that year. At the age of 22, he dropped out of school in Chinese drama for filming, but because of chance, he partnered Leslie Cheung in the movie "Red Lover" and won the Huabiao Award for Outstanding Actress. At the age of 26, he starred in China's first TV series "Don't Talk to Strangers" that reflects domestic violence. Then, the movie "Aspirin", the TV series "Mobile Phone", "Parental Love", the movie "Tuina", one classic work after another opened Mei Ting's golden decade. Until now, at the age of 47, an age that made many actresses tremble, Mei Ting stepped out of the comfortable label of a gentle woman and met Liao Suifang (TV series "Daughter Back"), Madame de Rainer (drama "Red and Black"), Li Qing (drama "The Seventh Day")...

Middle-aged actresses are favored by chance, and the outside world often attributes it to the sense of urgency brought by the years. But for Mei Ting, the answer seems to be no. The traces of the years fell on her, and inexplicably became soothing. She spoke slowly, her voice was slightly deep, and even though her heart was very excited, the surface was still calm. Her life is also very simple, reading, spending time with children, exercising, and being in a daze, almost filling her time. Last year, Mei Ting participated in the Avignon Theater Festival in France with the play "The Seventh Day", and within half a month, she took a train to Bregenz in Austria to see dramas and opera performances, go to the Pompidou Art Center and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris to enjoy art exhibitions, and fully immerse herself in the transcendent space of art.

"The good thing about the profession of an actor is that you can still act when you are old, and you can play all kinds of characters. I've been waiting for an opportunity, and when I don't have a chance, I'm preparing. Art is all connected, music, painting, literature, you have to spend more time learning when you're not filming. If you don't have enough reserves, even if you get a good opportunity, you may miss it, which is even more regrettable. Mei Ting said.

Gains and losses, trade-offs, indispensable to the courage of barbaric growth

Sensual and soft, it wrapped Mei Ting almost all the time, making her like a spring of warm water flowing slowly. But in the current, you can also feel the surging, boiling enthusiasm. This cold and hot seem to have become some kind of talent she was born with.

Mei Ting was born in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, her father was a military doctor and her mother was a teacher. The parents have a gentle personality, and even under the "strict father and mother" education method, the father has never beaten his daughter. Mei Ting is also deeply influenced by her parents, and has a gentle personality since she was a child, and she is unhurried. Sometimes, the heart is already excited like a pot boiling, but the appearance is still calm, not revealing a little.

However, because she grew up in a disciplined army, Mei Ting's soft character is also filled with stubbornness and tenacity. Since the age of 6, Mei Ting has been studying in boarding school for a long time and has cultivated the ability to live independently. At the age of 7, he entered the Nanjing Little Red Flower Art Troupe to practice dance hard, was admitted to the army song and dance troupe at the age of 13, and after graduation, he entered the front-line song and dance troupe of the Nanjing Military Region, and turned positive at the age of 19... In the 90s, this was the smooth life that countless people dreamed of. But in fact, at that time, Mei Ting's dance conditions were not top-notch in the troupe, and there was no problem in messing around, but she wanted to become an excellent dance artist but lacked "talent". "I love dancing and I love my job, but I don't like the feeling of messing around."

The outside world's accounts of Mei Ting's acting career often start here: at the age of 19, she became a hit after filming the TV series "Blood Child's Heart", and gave up her military work to apply for the Beijing Film Academy; At the age of 20, he was admitted to the Central Academy of Drama, but a year later he chose to drop out of Chinese drama for filming... Including for many years, Mei Ting chose the script, always believing in her first feeling when meeting the character, and never considering whether she could be "red". For example, at the age of 26, Mei Ting took over the TV series "Don't Talk to Strangers", playing Mei Xiangnan, a woman who was subjected to serious domestic violence by her husband An Jia. "At the time, I thought the script was very well written and the director was very good. After reading the information, I found that this is also a small vulnerable group, and this scene can also speak for more people after filming. Even, during the filming of this play, Mei Ting was "forced" to experience the humiliation and depression of domestic violence, and was grabbed and smashed into the fish tank with her head, and stepped on her face by slippers... Later, the play became popular, and until twenty years later, it was still talked about by the audience. However, this was not expected by Mei Ting. Including the TV series "Parental Love", which was Mei Ting's favorite script indirectly in those years. Jiang Defu and An Jie in the play let her see the shadow of her parents. But the show premiered in 2014 to a mediocre response. Mei Ting did not feel strange, "This does not affect my belief that it is a good work. "It turns out that a year or two later, with the replay of "Parental Love", the show finally became popular slowly.

Gains and losses, trade-offs, are repeated in Mei Ting's 20-year-old stage. Now, she recalls the past, occasionally regretting and losing, but every decision is made at the moment of the courage to grow barbarically.

Acting drama is like "fitness" and can stimulate energy collision

Although she left dance, Mei Ting's love for the stage has never disappeared.

During the rise of her career, she decided to enter the drama stage. It is an art that Mei Ting feels nourished. The first drama she participated in was "Pirate Faust" directed by Meng Jinghui. Mei Ting still remembers that the first time she went on stage for rehearsals, there was no audience in the audience, but she was reprimanded by the director for her lack of state. "He said that everyone else has boiled 100°C, and I am only 20°C."

Fortunately, this drama is only performed in a small theater, and the audience is only a few meters away from the stage, and the actors are almost within reach, and the actors can receive feedback from the audience more directly. That was the first time Mei Ting immersed herself in the energy field of drama performance - the actors on stage, the audience offstage, the competition between the performance and the characters to transmit energy to each other, there was a vigorous momentum in her heart. The feeling of this collision fascinated Mei Ting. She describes it as a way for actors to "fitness." "Every time I finish a stage play, I may be physically tired, but my heart is very full. And the stage play will allow the actor to store a certain amount of energy, and this energy can be carried over to my next work, whether it is drama or film and television. ”

When filming "Daughter Back", Mei Ting happened to be busy with the tour of the drama "Red and Black". She has never played a scene, in order to complete these two rare works, she has been running to different cities for several months, and even officially entered the crew of "Daughter Back" nearly a month late. "What I'm most worried about is that if I join the group too late, the whole crew is like a jug of water, starting to burn when it is cold, everyone grunts to 100°C, and I am still cold." However, the drama gave Mei Ting great help in shaping Liao Suifang. Every time after performing the three-hour "Red and Black" and returning to the set of "Daughter Back", Mei Ting can still feel the extremely strong energy transmitted into the body on the stage and transmit it to Liao Suifang again. Including the rivalry scenes of Liao Suifang and Chen Youxi in the play, Mei Ting also mobilized the feeling of power confrontation in the drama, and went back and forth with each other in lines and behaviors to stimulate each other's energy collision in performance.

Nowadays, although TV series such as "The Daughter Who Came Back" and "The Right Way to Open Life" starring Mei Ting have been broadcast one after another, she still gave up a lot of good scripts and roles for the sake of drama tour. She even considered that she would not take the show first, otherwise it would disrupt the crew's schedule. "Things are all relative. The help that acting drama brings me, professional exercise, and gain are very rare. There are gains and losses, this is the inevitability of life. ”

Comfort zones are dangerous and leave little room for improvement

The various and profound female characters in the drama also untied Mei Ting's performance and allowed her to break through her comfort zone in time.

In 2020, Polish director Christian Lupalai came to China to direct the drama "Diary of a Madman", and Mei Ting participated in a video interview remotely and became the actor of the "sister-in-law" in the play. This woman does not exist in the original work, but she is mysterious, beautiful, sensual, and contradictory, and she becomes the "second madman" in the play, which fascinates Mei Ting. She was still on another play at the time, and she didn't take a break for almost several months, running on the set and backstage rehearsals. The premiere of "Diary of a Madman" was in Harbin, and after Meng Jinghui saw it, he invited Mei Ting to star in the opening drama "Red and Black" of the 2021 Wuzhen Drama Festival, playing Madame de Rainer, who is naïve by nature, elegant temperament, and has burning enthusiasm, a woman who is completely different from her sister-in-law. After this role, there is the gentle but sharp Li Qing in "The Seventh Day".

These are all female characters who exist apart from Mei Xiangnan (whose role in "Don't Talk to Strangers") but have been expected by Mei Ting for nearly twenty years. Back in 2001, after the hit of "Don't Talk to Strangers", Mei Ting also became synonymous with gentle and virtuous screen, coupled with her gentle personality in life, more and more homogeneous characters threw olive branches. "Actually, I didn't particularly exclude similar characters. I believe that art is endless, and can be constantly explored, approached, and enriched. If you dig deep into one point, it's also interesting. ”

But the comfort zone still makes Mei Ting feel dangerous all the time, "because you will not improve, and you will not have newer, more challenging creations." ”

In 2017, Mei Ting took over the role of Empress Xun, the "villain" of the city government in "The Wind of the Langya List", which made her excited and immediately wanted to roll up her sleeves and do it. Liao Suifang in "The Daughter Who Came Back" is also seen by Mei Ting as an opportunity to break through her previous image. Including in the same role, different performances of the drama tour, Mei Ting is trying to find a new feeling. "That day we finished 'Day <>', it was very cold, and the audience didn't have as many as before. But after the performance, director Meng Jinghui still held a meeting for us very seriously and analyzed each scene. We don't want to replicate, it doesn't make sense to be like a machine every day. Even if I play the same person, I have to find new expressions, which is creation. ”

dialogue

Beijing News: How do you think age has changed for you? Will the precipitation of different experiences also change your perspective on the character?

Mei Ting: There will be more angles. It used to be especially easy to define whether the character was good or bad, right or wrong. For example, when I watched "Red and Black" many years ago, I would feel that Yu Lian really hated it, and I wanted to climb up and use women as ladders. But re-read it now, and you'll see more things, such as Yu Lian's desire to break through the shackles of class, including his final death facing himself.

Now when I see a character, I look at her more three-dimensionally. For example, in the TV series "Parental Love", An Jie is already a very good girl, but where are her shortcomings? Like nitpicking, it is especially easy to stare at a thing. For example, Liao Suifang in "The Daughter Who Came Back", knowing that her daughter is dead, but another person came and said that it was her daughter, and she must investigate. When I get a positive persona, I think about her shortcomings and weaknesses; Get the villain, but will think about the shining point of her humanity. When there are imperfections in everyone, characters can be rich and three-dimensional.

Beijing News: The work in the past two years has been very intense, and it is relatively possible to miss some of the more important stages of children's growth, will this make you regret?

Mei Ting: It's a lifelong regret. Because this stage of the child's growth has passed, it has passed. There is no way to make up for this regret. Our family also always told me, especially my parents, that I must accompany my children more, and when they grow up and begin to have their own social circles independently, they can't stick to them at that time.

But everyone is different. I want children late, and I have been working for so many years. There is no way I can not work either. I can only hope to reduce my work next year and spend more time with my children, but if I don't work at all, maybe our children will also think, why don't my mother go to work? They were used to me working very hard outside and came to see me rehearse. And I will feel that their mother's behavior also has an impact on them, they study very hard, and after doing their homework every day, they are very conscious of reading and practicing.

Beijing News: What kind of things do you do when you don't have a job?

Mei Ting: Try to exercise every day or every other day, all kinds of exercises. I used to like yoga very much, and yoga is also very suitable for me, but I feel that it seems to be too gentle, not only to practice things that suit me, but also to practice explosive power, like boxing. Outside of fitness, read a book, watch a movie, be in a daze, and time passes quickly.

B02-B03 edition written by Beijing News reporter Zhang He