US filmmaker holds on to his roots in China as a Beijinger

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"White face with a Beijinger's soul," this is the self-description of US filmmaker Andy Friend who has gained new popularity after playing the role "Mike" in the Chinese sci-fi blockbuster The Wandering Earth II.

The 56-year-old US actor, director and concept artist has actually appeared in many Chinese movies, but "th  is is the first time I've worked on a big Chinese movie where I'm playing just an American, and it is the US ambassador in the United Nations," he told the Global Times humorously.

"Almost all my roles in China have been 'a foreigner' in a scene. But when we started shooting, directors would say my Chinese is too good and I needed to be dubbed with a foreign accent, then I lost interest in such roles," he said.

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A unique growing path

Born in Beijing in 1966, Friend has been fully emerged into traditional Chinese art and culture under the influence of his parents and Chinese artists who were guests at his place.

His mother is an Italian collector who studied Chinese in the former Soviet republics and returned to China to study Eastern Asian art and history. She later was invited to translate the works of Chinese renowned writers including Lu Xun and Lao She; his father engaged in cultural and educational work in the US, and later worked in the Xinhua News Agency and China Radio International, and did English dubbing for many Chinese documentaries in the 1960s.

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In Beijing, Friend experienced authentic Chinese education. With a strong interest in drawing, Andy was enrolled in the traditional Chinese painting department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and became one of the only five freshmen recruited nationwide in 1983.

During his studies, Friend drew a lot of inspiration from and was enlightened by Chinese painting masters such as Huang Yongyu, Li Kuchan and Han Meilin, as well as some painters from Dunhuang, Northwest China's Gansu Province. He did not know his solid drawing skills would help him gain a foothold as a storyboarder in Hollywood.

Friend calls many experiences in life as an "accident." His initial footstep in showbiz begun in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, where some Hollywood films were been shot. Under the advantage of his bilingual ability, Friend came to Guangzhou with great interest and successfully joined the crew as a bilingual interpreter.