In 2016, Chinese actresses Zhou Dongyu and Sandra Ma Sichun made history at the 53rd Taipei Golden Horse Awards by jointly winning best leading actress for their performances in Soul Mate, a film directed by Derek Tsang Kwok-cheung about a tight bond between two young women.
By clinching the prestigious award at a relatively young age, both Zhou, who was 24 at the time, and Ma, 28, had a promising future ahead of them.
Since then the paths of the two actresses diverged. Zhou went on to star in a number of blockbuster movies, becoming one of the top-billing Chinese actresses. She appeared in box office hit (2018), which took in 1.4 billion yuan (US$202 million), and her performance in gritty school bullying drama (2019) won her the best performing actress gong at this year’s Hong Kong Film Awards.
In contrast, Ma has been involved in a series of lacklustre productions. Her works after her Golden Horse win include the TV series Oh My General (2017) and Age of Legends (2018), and movies (2018) and Nuts (2018). All failed to impress critics and audiences alike.
Her performance in (2019) was even panned by a film reviewer on China’s Twitter-like microblogging site Weibo as “embarrassing”. The reviewer also noted that the gap between Ma and Zhou’s quality of acting was widening.
That prompted Ma to retort in a Weibo post: “Zhou’s acting skills are [undeniably] good, but I want to ask you, [which parts] of my performance are embarrassing? I would like to ask for your advice.”
Recent media speculation over Ma’s mental health questions whether she is suffering from depression. In a June episode of Chinese reality TV show Not a Loner, Ma said she suffered from frequent insomnia due to anxiety disorder. She said that having a famous aunt, actress Jiang Wenli (whose husband is Gu Changwei, a well-known director), made people think she could pick whatever movies or TV series she wanted to star in.
“But I’ve never received help. All the online rumours make me feel helpless,” she said in the show.
She added she was subject to bullying at school because she had a famous aunt, while her sense of insecurity was made worse by frequent comparisons between her and Zhou in recent years.
But even her critics would agree it is too early to write Ma off as there is little doubt about her acting talent. She also has a couple of major projects coming up.
Born in 1988 in Anhui province, Ma cut her teeth in showbiz when she appeared in The Winter of Three Persons in 1995 at the age of seven. At 13, she took part in her first TV series, The Grand Mansion Gate.
In 2012, the graduate of Beijing’s Communication University of China won the China Film Society of Performing Arts’ best newcomer award for her performance in Time Flies Soundlessly. In 2015, she was nominated for best supporting actress at the 52nd Taipei Golden Horse Awards for her role in The Left Ear.
In the pipeline is Love After Love, directed by the revered Ann Hui On-wah, in which she plays a Shanghai school student who flees to Hong Kong after Japan invades China in the 1930s. The film is based on Eileen Chang Ai-ling’ s novel Ashes of Descending Incense: First Brazier.
She will also be appearing in Wild Grass, to be released across China on August 25, playing a small-town girl whose life is turned upside down by her unfortunate encounters in the city.
Audiences are no doubt waiting to see whether her latest performances can silence the critics who have been on her back in recent years.
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