Taiwan actress Ariel Lin Yi-chen has revealed how dieting ruined her health and how she is trying to lead a more relaxed life after decades of piling pressure on herself to succeed. Her stellar career, and her constant drive for perfection, led her to become widely known by Mandarin speakers as the “Queen of Taiwan Dramas” and the goddess with zero negative comments. But Lin says a life-threatening illness dramatically changed her outlook on life.
The 41-year-old is famous for her roles in hit Taiwan television dramas, , ), and most recently, . She has twice won the Golden Bell Award for Best Leading Actress, the Chinese-speaking world’s highest recognition for the television series category – for and . Many remember her from , adapted from the classic Japanese manga , in which she played an ignorant and reckless secondary school student who chases after the school’s smartest boy.
In real life, Lin was a grade-A student who demanded perfection of herself. She grew up with her little brother and her mother, who was a single parent. Her mother had a stroke when Lin was in secondary school and left behind a pile of debts that she had to work to pay off.
To buy her brother a computer, Lin signed up for a beauty contest in 2000, and made her debut in the entertainment industry not long after she won it. She said in a recent interview with Chinese magazine People that she inherited her perfectionism from her mother, a strong-minded, independent woman. The actress says she.
