China’s highest-paid film figure looks for her Hollywood moment as she changes representation.
China’s richest and most recognizable film face, Fan Bingbing, will join her I Am Not Madame Bovary director Feng Xiaogang at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), leaving William Morris Endeavor Entertainment (WME), The Hollywood Reporter reported Monday.
Fan, named China’s top actress, and number five in the world by Forbes magazine with an estimated income of US$17 million this year, has struggled to gain meaningful roles in Hollywood productions.
The actress, who appears on the Forbes list behind Jennifer Aniston but ahead of Charlize Theron, is looking for a Hollywood breakthrough. She speaks English and has appeared in a supporting role in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Having already conquered China starring alongside Jackie Chan and Johnny Knoxville in this summer’s Skiptrace, Fan will appear in Feng Xiaogang’s I Am Not Madame Bovary, to be released on November 18, and will play a mermaid alongside Pierce Brosnan n The King’s Daughter, which will come out next year.
Fan joins billion-dollar director Feng at CAA, with the latter having joined the Los Angeles-based agency in August. Bovary is Fan’s second appearance in a Feng film, previously starring in his 2003 movie Cell Phone.
The 35-year-old native of coastal Qingdao has been named topped the Forbes China Celebrity 100 list outright for the past three years, and is a popular pitch person in China, representing foreign brands including L’Oreal and Louis Vuitton. She was named to Vanity Fair‘s International Best Dressed list in 2015 and 2016. She also operates her own production company, Fan Bingbing Studio.
