Photo provided to Shanghai Star

Battle with disease

Qiao's passion and hard work quickly paid off. Not only did he become a director and leading actor in many foreign movies, he was also promoted to head of the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio in 1985, at the age of 42.

Then, at the peak of his success, serious illness struck. Qiao began a years-long battle with disease: first, cancer in 1986, 1998, and 2001, then a heart attack in March 2009, and an infarction of the brain two months later, causing Qiao to suffer paralysis in the left half of his face and body.

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Knife's edge

"The doctor told me it was unlikely that I would ever return to the stage, but a little voice in my head said, 'I will try my best to make that happen'."

Qiao's firm belief and strong will to recover, together with his wife's unrelenting care, helped him overcome his illness.

In January 2011, Qiao returned to the stage, reciting a poem by Alexander Pushkin in Haikou, Hainan. "The audience's enthusiasm and support cheered me a lot, and I have performed up to 100 times since then," he says.

A hundred lives

"I have experienced hundreds of lives during my work as a voice actor, and the challenges of feeling the characters' feelings are both charming and interesting," he says.

Qiao says he loves all his films equally, but the Japanese fi lm series Otoko wa Tsurai yo ("It's tough being a man") is the one he cares for the most.

The protagonist, Tora-san, is a kind-hearted vagabond who is always unlucky in love. In order to feel Tora-san's emotions, Qiao, used to voice-acting noble and handsome male characters and an urbane and sophisticated man himself, decided to adopt the character's shabby lifestyle.

"During that time, I tried to live a simpler life as Tora-san did," says Qiao.

The method acting helped, as the moment he stood in front of the microphone, Qiao says he felt like Tora-san.

During his career as a voice actor, Qiao either voiced, or directed voice-overs, in Chinese for up to a thousand foreign films, including Waterloo Bridge, Yesenia, Death on the Nile, The Bridges of Madison County, Gladiator, and the Harry Potter films.