Ma Chunrui

Ma Chunrui won the title of Miss Universe China in 2013.

That victory in Beijing was not an end goal but a stepping stone into television. Born in Tianshui in 1994, she soon realized modeling had an expiration date. So she began studying acting to find a place in the country's major productions.

And the gamble paid off.

In 2016, she played Meng Yiran in the series Love O2O. The role of the most popular student on campus gave her massive visibility among young audiences. But critics of the time clearly saw the risk of being typecast in pretty-face roles.

The Weight of Period Costumes

To break away from that image, she looked for period projects with more physical demands. In 2017, she joined the cast of Lost Love in Times to play Mingyan. The shoot was grueling, between the martial arts choreography and the traditional costumes, which weighed several kilos.

The actress shot The Legends in 2019. In this fantasy story she played Cang Hai and proved she could handle dense dialogue in green-screen settings. Technique in this kind of fiction demands absolute precision in movement so the digital illusion isn't broken.

She signed her most important contract for the drama Beyond in 2022. The series centered on speed skating and forced Ma Chunrui to train on ice for weeks before the cameras started rolling.

She pulled it off without doubles in many shots.

In 2022, she also took part in The Longest River. This project, about managing the Yellow River during the Qing dynasty, marked a complete change of register. She worked under director Zhang Ting in a setting of mud and constant rain that was a world away from the runway.

Budgets and long-running shoots

In 2023 she joined the cast of A Moment but Forever. Fantasy dramas like these require enormous logistics that can halt entire shooting cities. And Ma Chunrui has specialized in projects that demand months at the Hengdian studios with barely any rest.

She appeared in the series The Story of Mystics during 2024. The project had a budget of 300 million yuan, mainly devoted to post-production and cutting-edge digital set design.

The series wrapped up its international distribution at the end of that same year.