Buffy Chen Yan-fei is a Taiwanese actress who debuted in the drama film The Silent Forest (2020) while still at university. Her performance in that film earned her Best New Performer at the 57th Golden Horse Awards and Best New Talent at the 23rd Taipei Film Awards. She has since appeared in films and television series, including The Pond, Twisted Strings and the Netflix political thriller Wave Makers, for which she won Rising Star of the Year at the 5th Asia Contents Awards.
Early life and training
Born in 2000, Chen grew up with an elder sister and began learning modern dance as a child, hoping to become a dance teacher. She attended Hwa Kang Arts School for high school, where her interest in acting grew after a minor role in a drama series and later drama classes. After graduating from Hwa Kang's performing arts program, she enrolled at Chinese Culture University to study advertising design, but suspended her studies in 2020 to take a film role.
Breakthrough and later work
In The Silent Forest, Chen played a deaf teenager who is sexually assaulted by her classmates, and she spent three months learning sign language for the part. Her wordless performance was widely praised. She went on to appear in Little Big Women and the mystery series The Pond, and took recurring and lead roles in Twisted Strings and Wave Makers. In 2024 she starred in 18×2 Beyond Youthful Days, The Victims' Game and The Uniform, which premiered at the Busan International Film Festival.