Jonathan Kos-Read is an American, but now he has another name: Cao Cao.

After graduating from college in 1996, Cao Cao thought of going to China. "I like to read novels about going to a distant place to live alone. I find this whole thing very legendary, which makes me feel like I am the protagonist of the novel." And so Cao Cao packed up and started his own "legend."

Like many other foreigners, Cao Cao made a living by teaching the children of foreign representatives in China when he first arrived in Beijing. After two years of teaching, Cao Cao found that there were many foreigners on Chinese TV and movies, which inspired him to take this path.

In 1999, when he was looking through a magazine, he found an advertisement looking for foreign actors, so he contacted the director and talked with him for half a day. Before leaving, Cao Cao asked the director when he would know whether he was hired or not. The director was surprised, "You don't know yet? The chosen one is you!" The movie was called "Doing things for nothing." Since then, Cao Cao started his career as an actor in a Chinese drama group.

When Cao Cao first arrived in Beijing, he discovered that all the Americans characters in Chinese scripts were the same. The screenwriters always made American men look very free spirited and they would immediately run up and start hugging and kissing their romantic partners as soon as they meet.

As time passed and China's economy expanded, a lot of foreigners came over, so the writers of Chinese movies and TV shows had to develop more diverse characters.

After nearly 20 years of acting, Cao Cao has many views on acting and actors. In his opinion, every actor has his own special talent.

Cao Cao said, "In China, there are foreigners who perform better than I do, there are foreigners who speak better Chinese than me, and there are also foreigners who look better than me, but if we combine those factors altogether, there would be very few like me."

Since filming his first movie in China in 1999, Cao Cao has now participated in nearly 50 films and TV shows and played almost every famous important person who came to China. But the history and modernity in China has affected him also.

When studying at New York University, he chose to study Chinese as a second language. At that time, there were very few people studying it, and Cao Cao was the only white guy in his Chinese class, a status he came to enjoy.

The teacher asked each student to pick a Chinese name. At that time, Cao Cao was reading the English version of "Sun Zi's Art of War." Every sentence by Sun Zi was followed by comments from famous military experts of all ages, and he found out there would always be one guy who would explain it really clearly, whose name was Cao Cao. Later, he read "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms," only to know that the commentator Cao Cao was a famous militarist and writer, thus, when the time came for Jonathan to choose a name in his Chinese class, he chose that.

When he studied acting at New York University, Cao Cao was slightly shy when on stage. However, now that he's a movie star in China, he said that the country has allowed him to live his wonderful acting dream.

Director：James Zhang, Zhou Yiqiu

Editor：James Zhang, Zhou Yiqiu

Filmed by: James Zhang

Designer：Yu Peng 

Article Written by: Angelina Qu, James Zhang

Copy Editor：Keely 

Producer：Wen Yaru

Chief Editor：Chen Ran, Lin Dongwei

Supervisor：Zhang Shilei