39-year-old actress Zhu Rui from mainland China recently revealed in a personal video that she is currently unemployed, has exhausted her savings, and relies mainly on financial support from her elderly mother to make ends meet. In front of the camera, her eyes were red with tears as she admitted to struggling financially, unable to plan for her relationships and future, and only able to focus on getting by day by day.
Zhu Rui, born in 1987, graduated from the Performance Department of the Beijing Film Academy. In 2009, she gained attention for her role as Pan Fenghuang in “The Good Times of Daughter-in-law.” She went on to star in multiple film and television works such as “Hot Mom Chronicles,” “One Butler and Two Masters,” and “The Rose with Swords,” earning her the reputation in the industry as the “golden supporting actress” due to frequently playing supporting roles.
However, Zhu Rui’s acting career gradually hit a bottleneck. Due to the popularity of her role as Pan Fenghuang and similar middle-aged female characters, she was typecast as a “professional middle-aged woman,” limiting the types of roles she could secure. Despite attempts to audition for younger roles, she often faced rejection due to her image being perceived as fixed, leading to a decrease in job opportunities over time.
In addition to her career obstacles, Zhu Rui has been dealing with seven years of stalking and harassment since 2016. The harasser reportedly stalked her residence, monitored her whereabouts, and even applied to work as security in her neighborhood to spy on her up close. To avoid harassment, she has had to relocate multiple times, seek help from the authorities, and her life and work have been severely impacted.
The police advised her to reduce public social media activity and live a low-profile life due to the prolonged surveillance threat, which has made it impossible for her to travel normally and appear in public, disrupting her work routine as an actress and subjecting her to immense pressure both mentally and physically.
Meanwhile, her mother’s long-term illness has made it difficult for Zhu Rui to continue filming. As an only child, she needs to take care of her mother, but the long shooting cycles and the requirement to work in other locations have led her to decline invitations from out-of-town production crews, causing her acting career to stagnate gradually.
As the years passed with fewer acting opportunities, Zhu Rui has slowly transitioned into semi-retirement. The regrets in her emotional life have also caused her to experience prolonged mental exhaustion. She had been with her college boyfriend for nine years before they broke up, leaving her emotionally drained after years of emotional investment.
After losing all sources of income, Zhu Rui began living off the savings she accumulated from years of acting. She tried investing in stocks to boost her income, initially investing over 400,000 yuan and then adding over 300,000 yuan after suffering losses, totaling about 700,000 yuan of her entire savings. However, continuously supplementing her investments did not turn the situation around, resulting in a complete loss of all her funds within a few days.
Today, Zhu Rui has long faded from the entertainment industry and lacks stable income. She mentioned that she can only rely on her mother for financial support and currently does not have many plans for the future.
Zhu Rui’s situation is not unique. In recent years, the entertainment industry in mainland China has been in a downturn, leading to fewer film and television projects and filming opportunities. Many small and mid-level actors are facing challenges in finding roles and experiencing unstable income. On social platforms, there are actors who have disclosed their transitions to other professions, such as delivering food, driving ride-sharing services, or engaging in live streaming and short video content creation. For actors lacking in fame and stable resources, the inability to find acting opportunities has become more than a temporary career gap but could directly affect their daily livelihood.