Daisy Li

The gaze that broke the mold

Li Gengxi, who works outside China as Daisy Li, never attended a drama school before her first professional shoot. In 2017 director Xu Jinglei chose her to lead the cast of the series Classmate Past Tens. She was seventeen and had an innate ability to ignore the spotlight on set.

She needed nothing more than that first opportunity.

Her name began to take off in 2019 thanks to A Little Reunion. Her role as a student under the suffocating pressure of the education system connected with an entire generation of viewers. And she did it without falling back on the melodramatic mannerisms common among teen actresses of the time.

Before filming, she often spends weeks analyzing the subtext of her dialogue. She prefers silence to excessive exposition. For her, acting is about stripping layers away rather than adding them.

The year of technical recognition

The film industry is often cruel to child prodigies, but she avoided being forgotten by making unconventional choices. In 2021 she worked on Sword Snow Stride, a martial arts story with exhausting physical demands. But the real breakthrough came in 2023 with the release of The Long Season.

That suspense series raised the quality standards of television in her country. She played Shen Mo, a young woman whose life falls apart in a declining industrial setting. Her performance was the central pillar of a story spanning twenty years of mysteries and unresolved trauma.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2024 she starred in Viva La Vida, a drama about chronic illness that avoids cheap tears and sentimentality. For this role she won the Golden Rooster Award for Best Actress. She is the youngest person ever to win this trophy in the history of Chinese film awards.

Creative Control and Future Projects

Unlike other stars of her generation, Li prefers to get involved in the post-production process. In 2025 she shot The First Shot under the supervision of film noir veterans. She spends hours in the editing room to understand how her body language directly affects the final rhythm of each scene.

For her 2026 project, she signed a contract giving her a voice in the casting process for supporting roles. The production budget exceeds sixty million dollars, and filming will take place entirely on location in Jilin Province.

The deal includes a strict confidentiality clause covering the script until the technical premiere.