For an actress often hailed by the Taiwanese press as the “box office guarantee” of her generation, Gingle Wang Ching began her career with a startling lack of vocabulary: she had no idea what the word “action” meant on a film set.
Her very first scene in her debut feature, 2017’s All Because of Love, required her to walk down a school corridor, open a classroom door and step inside. What should have taken minutes instead took 33 takes.
“I didn’t even know that I had to hear someone say ‘Action!’ before I started acting. I probably walked off when the assistant director was saying ‘three, two…’ – or when they called ‘Cut!’, I thought, did it mean I cannot act any more? I had no idea.”
Gingle Wang and Kent Tsai in a still from All Because of Love (2017).
Looking back, she views the ordeal not as a humiliation but a foundational lesson in performance. She remembers speaking with her director, Lien Yi-chi, during a period of intense self-doubt.