She may still be better known in the West for her ritzy red-carpet dresses than her acting. In China, however, Fan Bingbing is The Celebrity; an actress, singer, philanthropist and film producer rolled into one ambitious, beautiful package.
Her earning power — and usefulness to luxury brands seeking to sell their goods to one billion Chinese — was confirmed this week as the only non-American in a list of the world’s highest-earning actresses.
Fan, 33, whose sole Hollywood performance to be seen in the West to date was in one of the X-Men films, came fourth in the annual Forbes list with her $21 million earnings, bettered only by Jennifer Lawrence, Scarlett Johansson and Melissa McCarthy.
The ranking highlights the increasing might of Chinese box office. It is the fastest-growing film market and has just opened the largest single screen in the world.
Fan’s ability to tap into China’s estimated $27 billion luxury goods market has already been spotted by fashion’s powerhouses. Chopard, the watchmaker, recently signed her up, she has been an ambassador for L’Oréal, Valentino and Versace are sweet-talking her, and Louis Vuitton chose to make her the first Asian actress provided with a custom-made red-carpet gown.
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Beyond the catwalks and carpets, there are contracts for another four X-Men films.
Within China, the actress has sometimes proved too much for the regime’s still highly conservative censors. Fan and her cleavage took equal star billing in a hugely popular TV drama, The Empress of China, which exposed what some claimed was the historically accurate low-cut apparel of the times.
Beijing quickly decided such history was offensive, and only allowed the series, China’s most expensive, to continue last year after close-crop editing of Fan’s face and neck that surgically reduced her taboo-bursting bust.
Her next role, in the upcoming film Lady of the Dynasty, will invite equal official scrutiny as she plays China’s most infamous imperial courtesan — including a sex scene with the emperor on horseback.
Unmarried, and the subject of constant and often vicious gossip, Fan recently broke with past practice and confirmed that she was in a relationship, with the Chinese actor Li Chen.
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While her acting has garnered few awards — her sole prize to date remains one from the 2010 Tokyo International Film Festival — she has received plaudits for her charitable deeds. Tianjin port police revealed this week that she had given one million yuan (£100,000) to help the victims of the catastrophic explosion in the port this month.
Her growing global status may be the harbinger of a new era where Asian actresses have the status and earning power of their western contemporaries.
Some things, however, seem unlikely to change: the world’s 18 highest paid actresses according to Forbes earned $660 million less than the world’s 34 highest paid actors.
Correction: Owing to a captioning error by the agency who supplied the picture, we incorrectly used a photograph of Zhang Yuqi with our article about Fan Bingbing (“A new A-list star rises in the East”, August 22).