Chang Chen Tells Taiwan's Rising Actors to 'Be Like Water' at TCCF

Chang Chen, chair of the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee, told six of Taiwan's rising performers to "be like water, changing shape to fit the vessel" at a Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) showcase in Taipei.

Chang won last year's Golden Horse best leading actor award for "Lucky Lu." He appeared at the "TCCF x The Golden Horse Awards: Taiwan Emerging Actors Showcase" to advise the young actors on working across different film sets. The event aimed to connect performers with international creative teams, investors and media.

Who took the stage?

The lineup featured Bai Xiao-ying, Ho Man-xi, Rosen, Jimmy Liu, Ma Shih-yuan and Lin Yi-ting. All are nominees or winners of Best New Performer at the Golden Horse Awards, Taiwan's top honors for Chinese-language cinema, drawn from two consecutive awards cycles.

• Bai is nominated this year for "Girl"; Ho for "Sunshine Women's Choir."
• Ma won the award last year for "Left-Handed Girl."
• Rosen, Liu and Lin were nominated for "Marching Boys," "Blind Love" and "A Dance With Rainbows," respectively.

What did the performers reveal?

Bai, who began acting at 6 and is now a university film student, greeted the audience in Mandarin and Japanese and said she trained in traditional Chinese martial arts for a decade. Ho described herself as slow to warm up, serious and full of contradictions; her dance background feeds an ambition to take on suspense action or other physically forceful roles.

Liu said he has practiced taekwondo for seven years. Lin put the emphasis elsewhere: "At this stage, I feel it's more important to light up others than to light up myself."

Ma said acting gives her an outlet for pressure. "When you give yourself completely to a role, audiences can feel your sincerity," she said. "It can give others strength and help you understand yourself better."

Rosen spoke of his love of nature and said acting lets him acquire new skills for each part. While preparing for one project he learned Western fencing, then entered a competition and won a bout.

Asked what they want to try next, Bai, Ma and Liu all said they hope to break away from familiar casting and play comedy or villains — a signal that typecasting already weighs on careers this early.

What does Chang's advice change?

Chang stressed adaptability across productions. Every set has its own atmosphere, he said, whether led by Wong Kar-wai or Hou Hsiao-hsien, and actors must gauge how much room each director and production team gives them.

He recalled guidance from Ang Lee: "Actors should read autobiographies of people with different personalities. Our job is to inhabit the lives of many different characters through our performances."

Chang closed with a sober assessment of the local industry: "Taipei may not have Hollywood's industry ecosystem, but we're working in a place we know, and that can help us do our best work." For six actors still building international profiles, that familiarity is now the platform the showcase is betting on.