Actress Fan uses name of character she hates on TikTok

Compiled by C. ARUNO and SIRA HABIBU

DISGRACED actress Fan Bingbing (pic) has joined the popular social media app TikTok but startled fans by choosing the name of a character she hated as her display handle, reported China Press.

On her profile, she named herself Suo Suo Zi (Mandarin: Lock Lock), a reference to the character of a maid called Jin Suo (Mandarin: Golden Lock) she played on the popular

TV series My Fair Princess in the 1990s.

The role propelled Fan to fame and she regularly played leading roles in films and TV series until 2018, when she was unofficially banned from Chinese airwaves after being involved in a tax evasion scandal.

Fan had once said that she hated the character of Jin Suo and that she was often unhappy during the filming of My Fair Princess, which made her decision to adopt the name as her online persona more confusing to her fans.

However, some fans speculated that Fan was expressing regret and apologising for her actions in a bid to get back into showbiz, hinting that she was even willing to play a role such as that of Jin Suo again.

In just a few days after joining TikTok and uploading five videos, Fan had already amassed 30,000 followers.

In 2018, she was slapped with an 880 million yuan (RM540mil) fine for tax evasion, touted as one of China’s “biggest tax evasion penalties in history”.

Since then, the actress had been blacklisted from the film industry in China and was dropped from the cast of Hollywood spy flick 355.

> Model and actress Angelababy became a trending topic on Chinese cyberspace after rumours surfaced that her salary for acting roles had fallen to less than 10 million yuan (RM6.1mil) – lower than that of many B-list actresses, reported Oriental Daily.This is in stark contrast to the height of her career in 2016 when she starred in the TV drama General and I, for which she earned 80 million yuan (RM48.8mil).

Younger actresses are now earning more than Angelababy, including 28-year-old Zhou Dongyu, who earned 100 million yuan (RM61mil) for her role in the 2019 TV series Behind The Scenes.However, the news did not garner much sympathy among netizens, with many taking the opportunity to criticise Angelababy’s acting skills.

“Is she still acting? Her acting skills aren’t even worth 1,000 yuan. The producers should give the roles to actors who are more hardworking and have more talent!” one netizen wrote.

Her role in General and I was criticised the most, with many viewers complaining that Angelababy, who was pregnant during filming, had relied too much on stunt doubles and special effects.

Some even took potshots at the actress, claiming that she was propelled to fame only by her marriage to popular Chinese actor Huang Xiaoming in 2015.

Even though Angelababy is said to have a good work ethic, she is rumoured to no longer be the favourite among film and TV producers.

The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.