Mystery around disappearance of Chinese star Fan Bingbing
BEIJING — X-Men star Fan Bingbing’s Beijing management office is dark and abandoned. Her birthday passed almost unremarked in China’s hyper-adrenalized social media environment.
For one of China’s best known stars and a rising Hollywood actress, Fan’s vanishing is stunning, coming amid vague allegations of tax fraud and possibly other infractions that could have put her at odds with Chinese authorities.
Fan has starred in dozens of movies and TV series in China and is best known internationally for her role as Blink in 2014’s “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” a cameo in the Chinese version of “Iron Man 3,” and star turns on the red carpet at Cannes as recently as May. She was booked to star with Penelope Cruz in the Hollywood film “355” and has a role in the upcoming Bruce Willis-Adrien Brody feature “Air Strike.”
Yet for nearly three months, Fan hasn’t been seen or heard from in public in any verifiable way.