One is known for being in X-Men: Days of Future Past, while the other is most recently in The Meg. Both are slender, sport long wavy locks, and have big, sparkling eyes dominating their porcelain faces. We are talking about two of the hottest Chinese actresses who have invaded Hollywood: the Bingbings.
It’s easy to mistake Fan Bingbing for Li Bingbing, and vice versa. In fact, Fan shared that she was approached at the Cannes Film Festival this year by a fan who shoved a poster of Li for her to autograph.
While the two Bingbings share similar names and physical traits, they are not the same person. Let’s take a look at the two lovely, beguiling Bingbings, after which, you would not have any problems telling them apart.
At 37, Fan is the younger of the two. She not only acts, but also produces and sings. She rose to fame in 1998 in her native China with the hit TV series My Fair Princess. Since then, her popularity continues to rise, and exploded in 2003 when she starred in the movie Cell Phone, which became the highest-grossing Chinese film that year. In 2007, she created her own company, Fan Bingbing Studio to produce and star in TV series.
Fan made a cross to Hollywood in 2014, playing the mutant Blink in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Since then, she has not appeared in another Hollywood film, although her presence is still felt. She was part of the jury at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, where she stunned with her elegance and style.
Although she has only one Hollywood movie under her slim belt, there’s more to come. She is set to star in spy thriller 355 opposite Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Lupita Nyong'o and Jessica Chastain, and has a role in the upcoming Air Strike, opposite Bruce Willis and Adrien Brody.
Beyond acting, Fan is being wooed to represent brands, most notably for Louis Vuitton and Barbie. She has her own Fan Bingbing Barbie, and was the first actress from China to join the Barbie global celebrity Hall of Fame. She is also the first Asian actress that Louis Vuitton picked to provide a specially tailored dress for their red carpet.
Fan was also recently in the news for tax evasion by the Chinese government, causing her to disappear from social media for over two months. One of China’s wealthiest entertainers, Fan was accused of signing dual contracts, with one declaring a lower pay-out in order to pay lesser taxes. She has recently re-emerged from her dark abyss, and we can only hope to see more of her soon.
At 45, Li easily looks a decade younger than her real age. Just like Fan, Li also sings and acts. Fame came knocking for her in the 1999 movie named Seventeen Years. Since then, she has won acclaim for her roles in movies such as A World Without Thieves (2004), Waiting Alone (2005), The Knot (2006), The Forbidden Kingdom (2008) and more.
Among the awards she has won is the coveted Best Actress award at the 46th Golden Horse Film Awards, for her performance in The Message, a film about the Japanese Invasion in China and their attempt at trying to sift out a spy among the Chinese collaborators.
She made the jump to Hollywood in the 2012 movie, Resident Evil: Retribution (2012), as Ada Wong, opposite Milla Jovovich’s Alice. Unlike Fan, Li has more than one high profile Hollywood movies. She was also in Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), starring opposite Stanley Tucci and Mark Wahlberg.
She was most recently in the shark thriller The Meg, featuring Jason Statham and Ruby Rose. In the movie, she plays Suyin Zhang, an oceanographer, supervising a mission to explore the deeper section of the Marianas Trench.
Except that things got a little out of hand, and she, along with her father, enlist the help of Statham’s character, a rescue diver, to help locate and retrieve a team sent deep underwater to explore the depths of the trench.
There’s no further Hollywood movie in the pipeline yet for Li, but looking at the popularity of The Meg, it won’t be long before another Hollywood movie comes knocking at her door.
In short, Fan Bingbing is an X-Men, while Li Bingbing is a video game-turned-movie character in Resident Evil, whom Stanley Tucci has a thing for in Transformers: Age of Extinction and is a hot mama oceanographer in The Meg.
Does that clear the air about which Bingbing is in what movie? Just don’t approach the wrong Bingbing to sign on your poster.
