Zhou Dongyu, a 32-year-old strong woman in Hot Search, is in dispute over her transformation？

Special feature of 1905 film network As the youngest "three-gold-winning actress", her film career has always attracted much attention.

In 2023, Zhou Dongyu starred in three works, and for the first time, she played a senior and capable self-media editor, Chen Miao, in her 2023 big screen finale, Hot Search. Her screen image has gradually changed from a girl to a Mesozoic woman, but in the process of her role transformation, the debate of polarized comments has never stopped.

For Zhou Dongyu, Hot Search is a challenge.

In the face of the role transformation debate, she has publicly stated that she did not deliberately transform, and in front of the age of 32, transformation is a natural thing. But in the face of Chen Miao, a capable female role in the workplace, she also regards it as a challenge.

In this challenge of trying to jump out of the comfort zone, Zhou Dongyu first broke through the limitation of her girlish appearance in external conditions, and created the image of women in the workplace through the makeup of wavy curly hair, big red lips and windbreaker; Secondly, she also deliberately lowered her voice to strengthen the maturity and credibility of Chen Miao’s role.

In the aspect of character temperament, Zhou Dongyu actually added an irreplaceable sense of fragmentation to Chen Miao. During the film’s release, there was a hot search for "Zhou Dongyu Chen Miao Shuang Wen’s mistress", and some netizens commented that "Chen Miao’s liveliness is not based on a perfect person’s design, but it is precisely because she is an imperfect rescuer that she is particularly real". As a girl who grew up in an unhappy background in family of origin, Chen Miao’s image is full of arc light.

When Zhou Dongyu plays the role of Chen Miao, the moments when her acting skills can most impress the audience are often those when she reveals fragility, weakness and a sense of fragmentation in the life stage of a mature woman. She is using her best acting skills — — Play the girl’s way, to perform the weak girlhood moments that occasionally flash on mature women. It seems that in breaking the inherent mature label of the workplace, Zhou Dongyu has injected his own personality label.

But many viewers also commented after watching the movie that Zhou Dongyu seemed to be reciting his lines all the time. Indeed, the character Chen Miao is actually running hot news in a large amount of information ocean, facing the constant test of traffic. When Zhou Dongyu, as the editor-in-chief, is reading data and repeating media terms such as "magic bullet theory" and "silent spiral", it is really easy for the audience to play by calmly and mechanically chanting.

Zhou Dongyu himself once said in an interview that one of the biggest difficulties in challenging the role of Chen Miao is to change her girlish voice to adapt to Chen Miao’s mature and professional language expression.

Who is calling for the transformation of Zhou Dongyu?

In the challenge of Zhou Dongyu’s transformation, apart from the audience’s hope to talk to more mature Zhou Dongyu, directors also hope to shoot more Zhou Dongyu.

The director of Hot Search chose Zhou Dongyu to play Chen Miao, just because of the complexity of Zhou Dongyu’s temperament, expecting to portray a new media editor who is both girly and capable enough through the lens.

From this point of view, it is not so much that the market is expecting, but rather that the market is eagerly calling for actresses like Zhou Dongyu to step out of the space of girlish roles and go into the broader spectrum of female roles.

Zhou Dongyu is now a "three-gold actress", and she is irreplaceable as an actress of the same age in terms of awards, the appearance of the film face and even the expressive force of acting.

The audience will mention the transformation, definitely because her previous role has given everyone an excellent "type" cognition, but these three films, represented by Burning Winter, Killing Parrots and Hot Search this year, actually represent a "female stage" that Zhou Dongyu wants to try. She may be a little more mature than a girl, but she is not completely an impeccable and indestructible career in the audience’s cognition.

Zhou Dongyu showed the audience the sense of vulnerability of professional women in Chen Miao’s body in Hot Search. Let the audience see the wandering and confusion of middle-aged women in Nana in Burning Winter; In Killing a Parrot, the audience can also see a woman who has been hurt by her feelings, and her emotional complex texture, and at the last moment, she can also be the one who takes up arms and fights back. In fact, it also adds some rich levels and dimensions to the female roles in film and television works in the market.

For directors or producers, choosing Zhou Dongyu is a icing on the cake. Even if she doesn’t succeed in the transformation, her performance in the film can pass, but if she can create a successful transformation role, the texture of the whole market and the whole film will show a better return on investment.

Therefore, this may also be a wind direction where the industry just chose Zhou Dongyu and expected her to present the transformation characteristics in her own works.

How to take the road of actor transformation?

Zhou Dongyu’s current state and performance can actually provide reference for the market and other actors of the same type.

First of all, the market, the creators must provide more female roles with a richer and broader spectrum for these actors to choose from; Secondly, put it on the actors themselves, and the audience and the market may also hope that they can expand themselves in a wider range and contribute more classic screen images.

Looking back at some examples of successful actresses, for example, when she was about 30 years old, she worked as a film producer, which created a new trend of "chick movies" in mainland China; It was also in his early 30 s that he gained his masterpiece.

So even though there may be some bumps and stumbling in the process of trying, maybe actresses need to make more attempts to adapt upward, so when she chooses a role, her role may grow rapidly with herself.

We also expect Zhou Dongyu, who is standing at the corner intersection and waiting for the traffic lights, to play more beautiful music scores of Mesozoic women on the screen in the future and find the most suitable scale for herself.