How Gingle Wang went from clueless novice to one of Taiwan’s top young actresses

For an actress often hailed by the Taiwanese press as the “box office guarantee” of her generation, Gingle Wang Ching began her career with a startling lack of vocabulary: she had no idea what the word “action” meant on a film set. Her very first scene in her debut feature, 2017’s All Because of Love, required her to walk down a school corridor, open a classroom door and step inside. What should have taken minutes instead took 33 takes. “I didn’t understand anything at all,” Wang, 28, tells the South China Morning Post with a self-deprecating laugh when we meet at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, where she serves as an Asian Visionary Ambassador. “I didn’t even know that I had to hear someone say ‘Action!’ before I started acting. I probably walked off when the assistant director was saying ‘three, two…’ – or when they called ‘Cut!’, I thought, did it mean I cannot act any more? I had no idea.” Looking back, she views the ordeal not as a humiliation but a foundational lesson in performance. She remembers speaking with her director, Lien Yi-chi, during a period of intense self-doubt. “He reminded me of that episode,” Wang recalls. “He said, ‘You did 33 takes and caused us to be delayed for over two hours, but you were still very happy that day. Even though you kept making mistakes, you still found the whole thing really fun.’ Isn’t that a very important point?” Nearly a decade since that chaotic debut, Wang has evolved into a formidable leading lady with an uncanny ability to anchor major commercial and critical hits. Yet, despite her A-list status, she approaches her craft with the same instinctual, almost haphazard vulnerability that she has harboured from the start. At one point, she reminds me that she lacks the academic training and technical toolkit that many peers rely on. “I am not someone who really likes using my own experiences to perform,” she explains. “Some actors like to imagine what it would be like if their cats or dogs passed away to make themselves cry. I am not that kind of person. I wouldn’t be able to cry because I would feel like it is fake. I just cannot think that way.” Instead, she relies entirely on the text and her environment. Before acting, she was a published novelist, writing under the pen name Jun Jun while studying in the US. That literary background heavily influences her approach to a script today. She reveals that she pays particular attention to the “triangles” in a screenplay – the symbols denoting stage directions and character actions between the spoken lines – to form images in her mind long before the cameras roll. And when a role demands that she delve into dark, heavy, emotional territory, as it somehow very often does, Wang’s secret is absolute surrender to her director. “To me, actors are very vulnerable when performing,” she says. “The director is somewhat like your only parent in those moments. Therefore, on set, letting myself enter the director’s world unreservedly is quite important to me.” This level of trust means chemistry is everything. Without a deep mutual understanding with the person behind the monitor, her performance can, in her own words, “get a little bit messy”. Among her creative partnerships, Wang feels most personally aligned with John Hsu Han-chiang, who directed her in Detention (2019) and Dead Talents Society (2024), both major hits. Her breakthrough role in the former earned her the best actress prize at the 22nd Taipei Film Awards. “Because our personalities are very close, the predicaments we encounter – whether in life or in work – can be very similar,” she says. “When working with him, I quickly get what he is trying to say.” Wang also cites the filming of Dead Talents Society as the most profound experience from her first decade of acting. “There were many scenes where I felt as if the character was speaking directly to me,” she says of her ghost protagonist, who believes her life was meaningless until she gradually learns the depth of her family’s love for her. Wang shares a similarly fruitful connection with Wong Ching-po, the Hong Kong director behind the Taiwanese crime thriller The Pig, the Snake and the Pigeon (2023), a surprise blockbuster in mainland China and a regional hit on Netflix in early 2024. “We are both Aquarians, and I feel he is also part of the ‘alien’ group,” she jokes, referring to their shared eccentricities. “Communicating with him, in some ways, doesn’t require much time at all.” Still, her reunion with Wong on the coming Netflix series Confessions proved to be an entirely different beast. Pushed by the psychological complexity of her character, Wang found herself adopting a Method-like approach on set, cutting herself off from the usual camaraderie she shared with Wong and her co-star Ethan Ruan Ching-tien. “This project is more difficult,” she admits. “So on set, I generally wouldn’t have too much interaction outside discussing the role with others. I just wanted to keep myself grounded in the moment. It was indeed a huge challenge for me, and the process was a bit more painful because of the depth of the character.” Although most of her work to date has been made in Taiwan, Wang is becoming a familiar face to international audiences via streaming platforms like Netflix – where both her films (The Falls, Marry My Dead Body) and shows (Wave Makers, GG Precinct) are available – and Disney+, which carries the hit films The Outsiders and Till We Meet Again. For all her global reach, Wang remains detached from the business of being famous, and she simply laughs when I ask if she is surprised by her own rapid stardom. “I do not seem to have had much time to feel or process this,” she says. “I do not really look back at these things, which lean more towards external superficialities. I care more about myself, about the things that actually matter to me.” This introspective shift is increasingly evident in the projects she chooses. Earlier in her career, Wang’s philosophy was straightforward: if she would pay to watch it in a cinema, she would take the part. Now, her selection process is more internal. “Rather than doing what seems to be the so-called popular choice, I feel like I want to return to myself more now. Regardless of whether others would want to watch it, regardless of what everyone thinks, do I want to act in it? Between me and this character, do we share some sort of resonance? “I am slowly starting to feel that, [depending on] whatever state you are in as a person right now, the corresponding kinds of things will slowly start coming to you. I want to know what the universe is telling me about my current state.” When asked what kind of role she would write for herself today if she were to dust off her literary skills and pen a screenplay, she lets out a heavy sigh that is only half in jest. “Why not just write about an actress who constantly wants to retire early?” she finally says with a chuckle. “Ah, that’s me!” Want more articles like this? Follow SCMP Film on Facebook

How Gingle Wang went from clueless novice to one of Taiwan’s top young actresses

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Wang’s first-ever scene took 33 takes, but now she is a ‘box office guarantee’ in Taiwan and an increasingly familiar face internationally

Wang’s first-ever scene took 33 takes, but now she is a ‘box office guarantee’ in Taiwan and an increasingly familiar face internationally