ABSTRACT
The term ‘film star’ conjures up associations of luxury, fame and leisure that seem to contradict much of communist ideology. Perhaps to guard against capitalist connotations, mainland Chinese actors and actresses in the 1950s and 1960s were not referred to as film stars (dianying mingxing); like most professionals in the Maoist period they were called workers, more specifically, film workers (dianying gongzuozhe). Zhong Xinghuo (b. 1924), a film worker known best for his comic roles in Today’s My Day Off (Lu Ren, 1959) and Li Shuangshuang (Lu Ren, 1962), is an apt figure through which to interpret the meaning of stardom in this period.
