Fan Bingbing

Fan was born and raised in the coastal city of Yantai, Shandong. Her grandfather, Fan Jie, was a general in the naval air force, and her grandmother gave her the Chinese character bing, or “ice,” to honor the family’s ties to the sea. Fan grew up watching her father, Fan Tao, a pop singer, perform at regional competitions. Her mother, Zhang Chuanmei, was a dancer and an actress. Both were party committee members and served as cadres in the cultural division of the local port authority. Fan has a younger brother Fan Chengcheng, who was a member of boy group Nine Percent and NEXT.

In 1995, during her second year at high school, Fan was involved a car accident and spent three months recuperating in a hospital, where she watched the Taiwanese drama The Empress of the Dynasty, starring Angela Pan as Wu Zetian. The drama gave Fan the dream of becoming an actress. Unable to advance to her senior year due to the accident while unwilling to repeat the second year, Fan applied to a performance school, Shanghai Xie Jin-Hengtong School of Arts.