“During the busiest time of my career, I was shooting six films, playing six different roles. I forgot about playing myself. One day, I stood in front of the mirror, I only saw an estranged face. ‘Who am I?’ I asked myself. ‘What do I like? What do I not like? Why am I unhappy?’ I could not answer those questions. And it dawned on me that I had lost myself unknowingly,” she wrote in her book.

But what lovers of Chinese-language cinema see is a perfect face – Lin’s earned her the affectionate nickname “big beauty”.

She charmed fans of Chinese-language cinema throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s with her appearances in a wide range of roles. From shy, young schoolgirl to a woman in search of love to invincible male martial arts fighter, Lin stretched the boundaries for women in the world of Chinese-language cinema.

Lin’s trajectory as an actress mirrors some important chapters in the development of Chinese cinema.

She was discovered while Taiwan was still under martial law. Society was strictly controlled and censorship was rampant. Film producers had to avoid showing anything violent or politically sensitive, leaving romantic dramas as almost the only option. This was the route to stardom for Lin.

In the 1970s, the first decade of Lin’s career, she starred in nearly 20 romantic dramas based on Chiung’s novels. “[In the 1970s] you could not have any violence, blood or sex. People were very conservative back then. Our kind of romantic drama features were the best and safest options,” she told Variety in 2018.

Tsui and Yim played significant roles in Lin’s acting career. She starred in Yim’s 1990 drama Red Dust, for which she won best actress at the Golden Horse Awards, often called the Oscars of Chinese-language cinema.

She recalls that Yim arranged a dinner with her and Taiwanese author Sanmao in 1988. Yim was planning to invite Sanmao to pen a script for Lin and he would assume the role of director. After completing the script, Sanmao invited Lin to her home, and the author read the script out loud, “page by page, as if she was channelling the characters from the script”.

The actress writes that Sanmao played music while reading the script to her. “I do not believe anyone has had a script reading experience like mine,” she writes.  

The role required Lin to dress as a man and the result was one of her most memorable roles.

“When Tsui Hark asked me to play the role of The Invincible East, I said yes without a second thought,” she said in the Variety interview, in which she revealed that Tsui and William Chang Suk-ping, who designed her costume, are the two people she trusted the most in the film industry. “I couldn’t be happier with the results.”

In Wong’s Ashes of Time, Lin plays a wanderer who suffers from split personality disorder, shifting between a brother and a sister.

Following that challenging role, she retired from the big screen, and led a relatively quiet life with her husband, Hong Kong billionaire Michael Ying Lee-yuen, and two daughters Eileen Ying and Melani Ying Yin-oi, as well as stepdaughter Claudine.

Last year, both the Hong Kong International Film Festival and Udine Far East Film Festival showed a restored version of Cloud of Romance. The Italian festival also presented her the Golden Mulberry Lifetime Achievement Award.

Looking back at her old films, the actress said she “never realised I looked so beautiful back in the day”. She regrets not knowing how to appreciate her beauty and cherish herself when she was young.

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