Yao Chen

Biography

Yao Chen is a mainland Chinese actress born on October 5, 1979 in Fuzhou, Fujian Province. She graduated from the Performance Department of the Beijing Film Academy in 2003. She rose to fame in 2005 for her role as Guo Furong in the sitcom "My Own Swordsman" directed by Shang Jing. She achieved major success in the 2008 espionage TV series "Lurking" alongside Sun Honglei, winning the Huading Award for Best TV Actress. In 2014, she was named one of the "100 Most Influential People" by Time magazine. She married her classmate Ling Xiaosu in 2004 and they divorced in 2011. She later married photographer Cao Yu, with whom she had a son in 2013 and a daughter in 2016, before announcing their divorce in March 2026.