Hu Die (1907-1989) had a career as a film actress from the end of the 1920s until the '60s; her most brilliant period was in the '30s and '40s. In the early 1930s, Hu played the leading role in China's first non-silent film, The Singsong Girl, where she portrayed a kindhearted but somewhat naive woman who endures her husband's abuse without the slightest resistance. In The River Flows Rampant, the first film made by the left-wing dramatists, Hu starred as a revolutionary, Xiujuan. Her performance in the latter role won much praise.
The double leading roles Hu played in Twin Sisters catapulted her to the height of her art. She played the roles of Dabao and Erbao, the twin sisters with different dispositions. The film broke the record for number of audience members in domestic films in the 1930s. Later, Twin Sisters won acclaim in Japan and in Southeast Asia and Western Europe.
Hu played a full spectrum of characters, including a maidservant, loving mother, school teacher, actress, prostitute, dancing girl, daughter of a rich family, laborer and factory worker. She had many attractive, unconventional qualities, and her performances were gentle, honest, refined and sweet. Audiences call Hu the "film queen." With a film career that spanned both the silent and non-silent film era, Hu was one of the best Chinese film stars of the 1930s and 1940s.
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