Liao Fan makes the best of whatever role falls into his lap, nabbing a Silver Bear in Berlin for his eye-catching turn in Black Coal, Thin Ice. He's not going to rest on his laurels and will continue to take risks

Liao Fan is a risk taker. It is hard to detect a common theme running through the more than 50 roles he has done on screen and stage.

"I never thought about commonality," says the prolific actor. "I took whatever came along. I didn't have much choice then. As long as the role was interesting, I'd take it. Now that I think about it, the leading roles I took tended to be losers who lived on the edge. They are intense and need an outlet, sometimes resorting to extreme means."

Liao recently won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 2014 Berlin International Film Festival, the first time a Chinese actor was so feted in this category. He is not considered leading man material, having appeared in only a handful of big roles on screen in his career. Yet, he pops up in so many movies and television dramas, albeit in supporting parts, that both his name and his face are recognizable to many people. His win of the coveted Berlin kudos has been jokingly nicknamed "the revenge of the second banana".

He does not mind. "The second banana is indispensable anyway," he quips.

When news of his surprise win reached his homeland, social media went abuzz with notes of congratulations from those who seemingly had known him for a long time. The press counted the guest list when Huayi Brothers, a film company that cast him in several earlier movies, threw a celebration party for him upon his return, and concluded those who attended were his "real" friends, not fair-weather ones hogging the coverage.

However, for those who put some heart into watching Liao's performances in roles big or small would not be taken aback by his victory. No matter how fleeting his screen time, he is able to make it juicy and add an imprint with his unique portrayal.

Liao has such a wide range that, in If You're the One 2, he was cast as a man who had undergone a sex change, a failed one at that because the role was played by another actor in the first movie. "Director Feng Xiaogang thought of me, and I took it mainly out of curiosity," Liao explains. "Now that you asked me, it was indeed a challenge for audiences accustomed to see me in macho roles."

Liao's concern about audience acceptance was less significant compared to his worries that his gay friends might say he was not credible enough in the role. "I envied actors like Sean Penn in Milk. The character was so much more fully developed. Mine was a cameojust to get a laugh."

Liao's role in Black Coal, Thin Ice is his first leading role that will hit the big screen. (The movie opens on March 21 across China.) His previous two big movies offered him equally intense and three-dimensional characters, which he tackled fearlessly, but they never saw the light of day, not officially. "This script gives me a lot of room (to test my acting skills) and its range even spans five years, with my character going through an emotional roller coaster," he says, commenting on his role as Zhang Zili, a cop who failed in a mission and carried his shame to his subsequent life as a security guard.

For this part, Liao did a lot of research and fieldwork, talking to cops and watching their police videos. He observed absurdities of the daily drudgery along with risks they have to endure. There was a case when the cops got a reliable tip and busted a guy holding out in a hotel room. The guy would not confess. Eventually, they realized they had mixed up one digit with the room number. That kind of thing happens frequently in real life, he says, but in this movie a sense of black humor permeates the atmosphere rather than the plot.

To show the character's fall from grace, Liao put on a lot of weight for the post-trauma scenes. This is typical of Hollywood actors, but still quite rare in China. "Whatever good or bad side he has, I have to make him real," Liao says.

Moreover, the role is demanding in that much of his emotional conflict is not given a physical form, but rather, conveyed through moments of silence and very few physical movements. "I did make designs for his physicality, such as the weight gain, but I can understand the repressed feeling he had because I went through a similar stage of depression in my life. So I could totally relate to him."

Liao suffered for his art. When he injured himself falling from a horse while shooting The Great Revival (2011), an epic with a huge cast, he had moments of doubt for the viability of his career. "I had 12 steel needles inserted into my body, and I got deflated," he recalls.

It took him a year or two to recover, physically. Mentally, it took longer until the script of Black Coal, Thin Ice opened up a new and yet familiar world. "I needed the release. I felt I knew this character. I could give life to him," says the 40-year-old.

Liao Fan does not see his own life as a typical success story. He was never short of work after graduating from the Shanghai Academy of Drama. Many of his early works in television were quite popular while his leading roles in independent films garnered some prizes. "Mine is not a melodrama filled with tear-jerking moments," he jokes. "I was not miserable before getting the big award."

Now that the public as well as his peers has awakened to his talent, he will have more freedom to plan his career. He will not mind taking small roles again, he says, as long as they are well written. And he will keep audiences on edge by taking on new challenges. Black comedy or even romantic comedy is something that fascinates him, for example. "I'd also love to try something like Benedict Cumberbatch's role in Sherlock or Zhang Hanyu's role in Assembly (a Feng Xiaogang war picture for which Liao has a smaller part)," he says. "If you play the same type again and again, your road will become narrower. Some sharp turn in role choices will jolt me out of complacency and rejuvenate me."

Liao's adventurous streak would not have left him even if he had never got into acting. "I would have tried writing or travel," he says.

raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 03/21/2014 page29)