- Ye dropped out of university to pursue a career in the entertainment industry after winning a beauty pageant in Hong Kong
- She became a legendary wuxia actress on TVB in 2000s and now not only acts, but also writes and produces her own shows
In the late 1990s, Michelle Ye Xuan was called a rising star by Hong Kong TV channel TVB. Despite have little prior acting experience, Ye " who turns 40 today " has lived up to, and continues to live up to, that claim in her career in the entertainment industry.
Ye, who was born on February 14, 1980, in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, grew up in a family that placed emphasis on academic excellence and moved to the United States at the age of 10. She always stood out in the classroom and earned a full scholarship to study political science at Wellesley University in Massachusetts in 1998.
Acting was not something Ye saw in her future, as she wanted to become a lawyer like her father, who had his own law firm in Manhattan in New York.
Encouraged by her stepmother, though, Ye took part in the 1998 Miss Greater Chinatown NYC Beauty Pageant and was crowned the winner. The following year, she entered the Miss Chinese International Pageant held in Hong Kong, and again walked away with the crown.
After studying at Wellesley for a year, Ye dropped out of university and signed an acting contract with TVB, going on to become a staple actress in its television dramas.
In 2003, she was named TVB's "Favourite Actress", and she went on to star in more than 30 drama series, including Eternal Happiness, Gods of Honour and The Royal Swordsmen.
In The Royal Swordsmen, Ye brought to life the character of an ancient Chinese swordswoman that martial arts fans had only read about in wuxia, a genre of fiction that details the adventures of martial artists in ancient China. Many viewers of this genre born in the 1980s and '90s regard Ye as an inalienable part of their childhood memories as she breathed life into many classic wuxia roles.
In 2013, on a celebrity talk show, Ye revealed that: "At TVB, I worked 20 hours a day. We made 200 episodes a year, and every young actor or actress who gets promoted has a thorough training regime."
Ye's own contract with TVB ended in 2005, after which she accepted an offer to work on the big screen from the Rich & Famous Talent Management Group, which has worked with stars including Shu Qi, Anthony Wong Chau-sang and Denise Ho Wan-sze.
At the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2006, Ye was nominated for best new performer for her role in art house comedy Moonlight in Tokyo (2005), in which she starred alongside Leon Lai Ming and Chapman To Man-chat.
In 2009, she had a role in the action thriller Accident, which won her the best supporting actress gong at the 29th Hong Kong Film Awards in 2010.
Ye " who as recently as last year was still acting " has been exploring other opportunities outside acting. In 2011, she founded her own production company, Dongyang Ye Xuan Artists Agency Studio, and she has been both a screenwriter and producer.
In 2012, Ye produced and starred in The Ninth Widow, a widely watched series adaptation of a novel by prominent Chinese-American author Yan Geling. In the show, against a backdrop of famine and land reform in a Chinese village half a century ago, Ye plays a widow who hides her father-in-law in her cellar after he is wrongly branded an "evil landlord".
At the launch ceremony hosted by Chinese broadcaster Xiamen Television, Ye said she wrote the adaptation because she had not been able to put the book down when she read it. "When I was writing it, it felt like my own child," she said.
To make the character more real, complete and compelling, Ye lived in a remote village in Jiaozuo city, Henan province, for two months. The experience helped her write her script as she was able to observe first-hand the lives of farmers and village women.
Ye also wrote, produced and starred in 2013's television drama Athena, which was also screened in mainland China.
"I like being a screenwriter the most," Ye said in a 2018 interview with Chinese movie critic Shi Fan, "because the screenwriter is the most creative (role) and the actor or actress adds a second layer of creation … the actor or actress is a pen in the painter's hand. The real painter is the scriptwriter and the producer."
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