Early life and education
Zhang was born Zhang Xin on 25 September 1982 in Duyun, in the Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture of Guizhou. His parents and maternal grandparents had moved to Duyun from Chongqing during the Third Front campaign to work at the city's bridge factory, and he grew up in the factory's community, attending its school for employees' children and speaking "railway dialect", a variety close to Sichuanese used inside the factory. He loved singing in high school, but after he failed the entrance examination for vocal music, he was persuaded to try acting instead and was admitted to the College of Arts of Guizhou University. In 2003, while still a student, he was cast by the director Wang Xiaoshuai in a small role in Shanghai Dreams, which was filmed in Guiyang, which was his first film.
Career
Stage and early film roles (2005–2017)
In 2005, Zhang joined the Guizhou Provincial Drama Troupe, where he rose to play leading roles in productions that won national awards. In 2008, after a provincial tour, he left the troupe for Beijing without formally resigning, having written in his diary, "In 2008, I should be in Beijing." His early years in Beijing were difficult; he worked as an assistant director and took small parts, mostly in independent films. In 2011, he played the lead role, Mengzi, in Pistol, a short film by the advertising director Lü Huizhou. His other films of this period included Feng Xiaogang's Aftershock (2010), Cai Shangjun's People Mountain People Sea (2011) and Song Chuan's Ciao Ciao (2017).
Breakthrough (2018–2019)
In 2018, Zhang played Yu Cheng, a small-time gangster, in Hu Bo's An Elephant Sitting Still, which won the Best Feature Film award at the 55th Golden Horse Awards. In Wen Muye's Dying to Survive, released that July, he played Peng Hao, known as "Huang Mao", a young leukaemia patient. Although he had only about a dozen lines, the role earned him nominations for the Golden Horse Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Rooster Award for Best Supporting Actor at the 32nd Golden Rooster Awards, and in March 2019, he won the Asian Film Award for Best Supporting Actor at the 13th Asian Film Awards. In November 2018, he played the bungling robber Hu Guangsheng in Rao Xiaozhi's A Cool Fish, which was filmed in his home province of Guizhou.
In September 2018, he was named New Actor of the Year at the GQ China Men of the Year awards, and in 2019, he was nominated for Actor of the Year by the China Film Directors' Guild. He also won the Best New Actor award at the 26th Beijing College Student Film Festival and a Youth Power award from Southern People Weekly. After his success, he received many offers, but he turned most of them down in 2019 to adjust to being in the public eye.
Leading roles (2020–present)
In 2020, Zhang played a police officer in the anthology film My People, My Homeland. In Li Xiaofeng's Back to the Wharf, released on 6 November 2020, he starred opposite Song Jia as Song Hao, a top student whose life is upended after he accidentally kills a man; the film had competed for the Golden Goblet Award at the Shanghai International Film Festival earlier that year. In 2021, he played a blind singer in Are You Lonesome Tonight? and starred with Ma Li in Geng Jun's Manchurian Tiger, which won the Golden Goblet Award for Best Feature Film at the 24th Shanghai International Film Festival in June 2021.
In February 2022, he appeared in Wen Muye's Nice View and played the marksman Liu Wenwu in Zhang Yimou and Zhang Mo's war film Sniper, for which he was nominated for the Golden Deer Award for Best Actor at the 17th China Changchun Film Festival. In 2023, he starred with Zhou Dongyu in Tainted Love, a film about a romance scam, released on 15 September, and in Hao Feihuan's mystery film Record Without Words, for which he won the Fei Mu Award for Best Actor at the 7th Pingyao International Film Festival in October 2023; the film was released in China on 1 December.
In 2024, he starred with Huang Jingyu in the crime series The First Shot, which began airing on 3 September, and appeared with Song Jia and Zhong Chuxi in Shao Yihui's comedy Her Story. In 2025, he appeared in Wang Mu's The One, Peter Chan's She's Got No Name and Rao Xiaozhi's Made in Yiwu 3, a follow-up to A Cool Fish in which he starred with Ren Suxi. In December 2025, he starred in Crimes Against Humanity, a television series about Unit 731, which began airing on Youku and Jiangsu Television on 13 December. In 2026, he starred with Chen Haoyu in Front Teeth, released on 1 May, and appeared in Cao Dun's historical film Heroes of Dunhuang, which had finished filming in January 2023 and was released on 25 September 2026.
