Liu Haocun

Zhang Yimou spent three years searching for the lead actress of One Second among thousands of candidates from art schools. In the end, he chose a dance student from the Beijing Dance Academy who had no prior experience in front of the camera. Liu Haocun arrived on set in 2018 with a physical fragility that fooled the audience.

And the director was not wrong.

Her official debut came in 2020 after several administrative delays that nearly buried the film. In it, she plays an orphan desperate for a scrap of film during the Cultural Revolution. International critics praised her clear-eyed gaze, but Chinese audiences started scrutinizing her from the very first minute. Before the editing of her first film was even finished, the director had already signed her for his next project.

Being a Zhang Yimou girl comes with the burden of a reputation for technical perfection that can sometimes feel suffocating. In 2021, she worked with the master again in Cliff Walkers, playing a rookie spy in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. That same year, she won the Best Breakthrough Actress award at the Asian Film Awards. But the Chinese industry is a reputation shredder, and scrutiny of her private life soon followed.

In mid-2021, a family scandal erupted involving a dance school run by her parents, damaging her public image. Social media in China is unforgiving, and the actress went from being the darling of auteur cinema to a constant target of fierce criticism. She chose to stay silent and keep working so the outside noise wouldn't devour her craft.

Because work is the only possible refuge in these cases.

The Leap into Mainstream Productions

In 2022, she starred in Only Fools Rush In under the direction of Han Han. The film grossed more than $80 million in its first week in theaters, but the reception was lukewarm. It was a strange moment for her. She was trying to break free of prestige cinema and move into the romantic blockbuster space, with mixed box office results.

Then came 2023 and the shoot for Ride On alongside Jackie Chan. In this story she plays the daughter of a veteran movie stuntman who tries to rebuild her bond with her father. Working with a global legend gave her a different kind of visibility beyond the festival circuit. But the shadow of her early career still loomed large for an actress who had barely turned twenty.

Her move to television was a smart tactical decision. In 2023, she led the cast of Derailment, a science fiction and romance series of 30 episodes that performed very well on digital platforms. Here she plays an upper-class woman who ends up trapped in a parallel reality as a poor worker. The series racked up millions of views and helped refresh her image with the young audience that watches TV dramas.

In 2024, she starred in The Parades under the direction of Michihito Fujii. It's a production that explores magical realism and loss through a highly visual lens. Her performance here moves away from the naturalism of her early years in pursuit of something more dreamlike. That's when the Japanese market began to take an interest in her profile as a transnational actress.

Her representation contract for the Asian market was renewed in 2024 under strict confidentiality clauses that limit her appearances in non-specialist press.