Profile | Ex-Taiwan model, actress Jean Wang ends abusive marriage, excels in culinary arts
Entertainment star impresses with patisserie skills; maintains film career, becomes role model for women who face domestic violence
Taiwan actress and ex-model Jean Wang escaped an unhappy and abusive marriage to rebuild a career using her master culinary skills.
Wang, 55, debuted as a model at the age of 15. She was once hailed as Taiwan’s most beautiful woman and was soon snapped up by the film industry.
She played a main character in the 1993 Hong Kong film The East is Red together with legendary actresses Brigitte Lin and Joey Wong. She also played an important supporting character in the wuxia film series Once Upon a Time.
In 1996, she was offered the part of the main character in Chen Kaige’s Temptress Moon, but was replaced by Gong Li reportedly because of the director’s strict demands for acting skills.
Wang then slowly faded from show business. In 2004, she married a fu’erdai, or the son of a rich family, Chen Wei-Tao, and had a son with him.
Chen was violent and abusive to her, even physically assaulting her a day before she gave birth.