Paing Phyo Thu

{{Short description|Burmese actress}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Paing Phyo Thu

| image = PaingPhyoThu.jpg

| caption =

| native_name = {{lang|my|ပိုင်ဖြိုးသု}}

| birth_name =

| birth_date = {{birth-date and age|5 April 1990}}

| birth_place = Yangon, Myanmar

| nationality = Burmese

| occupation = Actress

| years_active =

| awards =

| alma_mater = University of Medicine 1, Yangon

| parents = Soe Win (father)
Nwe Oo (mother)

| spouse = Na Gyi

| website =

| nickname = Thu Thu

}}

Paing Phyo Thu ({{langx|my|ပိုင်ဖြိုးသု}}; born 5 April 1990) is a Myanmar Academy Award winning Burmese film actress and a medical doctor. She won the Myanmar Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 2017 Myanmar Motion Picture Academy Awards with the film, 3Girls. Paing Phyo Thu is considered one of the promising and prominent actresses in Myanmar. She is known for her performances in Mi (2018),{{Cite web|date=2019-03-21|title=Defying convention to find another kind of success|url=https://www.mmtimes.com/news/defying-convention-find-another-kind-success.html|access-date=2022-01-07|website=The Myanmar Times}} Now & Ever (2019) and What Happened to the Wolf? (2021).

Early life and education

Paing Phyo Thu was born on 5 April 1990 in Yangon, Myanmar. Her mother Nwe Oo, is a physician. She passed the matriculation from TTC Yangon in 2006. She graduated from the University of Medicine 1, Yangon. She served as Health Ambassador (Yangon Division) for Ministry of Health and Sports in 2018.

Career

Paing Phyo Thu started her career as a child actor in 1999. Her performances as child actor stood out and she became an actress in Myanmar major films in later years. In 2017, she was cast to play a lead role in the film Mi which is based on the novel by one of the most prominent Myanmar novelists, Kyi Aye.{{Cite web|date=2018-08-23|title=Kyi Aye: A life well lived|url=https://www.mmtimes.com/news/kyi-aye-life-well-lived.html|access-date=2022-01-08|website=The Myanmar Times}}{{Cite web|url=http://yangonlife.com.mm/mm/article/18807|title=ဆရာမကြီးကြည်အေးရဲ့ မီနဲ့ ပိုင်ဖြိုးသု|website=Yangon Life|access-date=2019-03-13}} Although expectations were high, the film was well received by the audience. The film release was followed by some criticism on her portrayal of character Mi who is a chain-smoker.{{Cite web|url=http://burmese.dvb.no/archives/299511|title=ဆေးလိပ်သောက်သည့်ကိစ္စ အကယ်ဒမီ ပိုင်ဖြိုးသု ရှင်းလင်း (ရုပ်သံ)|website=DVB|access-date=2019-03-13}} She stood firmly of her portrayal of Mi by giving up her title of Health Ambassador (Yangon Division) for Ministry of Health and Sports.

She won the Best Actress Award for her performance in Mi (film) at Star Awards (2018). She was nominated (Best Actress) for her performance in Mi (film) at [https://aseanfilmfestival.com/ ASEAN International Film Festival and Awards] (2019). In 2021, she was also nominated for Best Performance (Seymour Cassel Award) in What Happened to the Wolf? at Oldenburg International Film Festival (2021).

On 1 January 2019, she married Na Gyi, the Burmese film director who directed the film, Mi.{{Cite web|url=https://maharmedianews.com/?p=3108|title=ထူးခြား ဆန်းသစ်မှု တွေနဲ့ ပြည့်နှက်နေတဲ့ ဒါရိုက်တာ ဏကြီး နဲ့ ပိုင်ဖြိုးသု တို့ရဲ့ မင်္ဂလာပွဲ|publisher=Mahar Media News|language=my|access-date=2019-03-13}}{{Cite web|url=https://news-eleven.com/entertainment/18577|title=ဇာတ်ကောင်စရိုက်တိုင်းကို ပီပြင်စွာ ပုံဖော်လိုသူ ဆရာဝန်သရုပ်ဆောင် ပိုင်ဖြိုးသု၏ ငယ်ဘ၀ အမှတ်တရ ဖြတ်သန်းရာ|website=Eleven Media Group Co., Ltd|language=my|access-date=2019-03-13}}

Political activities

Following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, Paing Phyo Thu was active in anti-coup movements both in person at rallies and through social media. Denouncing the military coup, she has taken part in protests since February.{{cite news |title="CDM Heroes တွေရဲ့ ကျေးဇူးကြွေးတွေ တင်နေပါပြီ"လို့ ပိုင်ဖြိုးသု ပြော |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/lifestyle/entertainment/2021/02/23/238452.html |work=The Irrawaddy |date=23 February 2021|language=my}} She joined the "We Want Justice" three-finger salute movement. The movement was launched on social media, and many celebrities have joined the movement.{{cite news |title=မတ်လ ၂၄ ရက်နေ့ "Silent Strike" မှာ လူညီကြဖို့ ပိုင်ဖြိုးသု တိုက်တွန်း |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/lifestyle/entertainment/2021/03/23/239786.html |work=The Irrawaddy |date=23 March 2021|language=my}}{{Cite web |first= |date=2022 |title=Finalist: Anonymous, freelance contributor, The New York Times |url=https://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/anonymous-freelance-contributor-new-york-times |website=The Pulitzer Prizes}}

On 2 April 2021, warrant for her arrest was issued under section 505 (a) of the Myanmar Penal Code by the State Administration Council for speaking out against the military coup, calling for participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) and supporting the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw.{{cite news |title=Warrants issued for artists, entertainers that called for CDM participation |url=https://elevenmyanmar.com/news/warrants-issued-for-artists-entertainers-that-called-for-cdm-participation |work=Eleven |date=3 April 2021}}{{cite news |title=စစ်ကောင်စီကိုဆန့်ကျင်တဲ့ အနုပညာရှင်တွေကို ဆက်တိုက်အမှုဖွင့်နေ |url=https://www.rfa.org/burmese/news/myanmar-celebrities-arrest-warrant-myanmar-military-coup-04032021111747.html |work=Radio Free Asia |date=3 April 2021 |language=my}} Paing Phyo Thu and Na Gyi have been in hiding ever since.{{Cite web|author=Sandi Sidhu and Helen Regan|title=Burmese actress goes into hiding as celebrities opposing Myanmar coup added to arrest list|url=https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/18/asia/myanmar-protest-celebrities-arrest-intl-hnk/index.html|access-date=2022-01-07|website=CNN|date=18 February 2021 }}{{Cite web|title=Paing Phyo Thu|url=https://www.mizzima.com/tags/paing-phyo-thu|access-date=2022-01-07|website=Mizzima Myanmar News and Insight|language=en}}

Filmography

{{expand list|date=March 2019}}

=Film (cinema)=

=Television series=

Awards

class="wikitable"
YearAwardCategoryFilmResult
2016Myanmar Academy AwardBest Supporting ActressAngel of Eden{{Nominated}}
2017Myanmar Academy AwardBest Supporting Actress3Girls{{Won}}
2018Myanmar Academy AwardBest ActressMi{{Nominated}}
2018Star Awards{{Cite web |title=STAR AWARDS 2018 gives prizes for best film, TV series, fashion statements |url=http://www.globalnewlightofmyanmar.com/star-awards-2018-gives-prizes-for-best-film-tv-series-fashion-statements/ |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190406214707/http://www.globalnewlightofmyanmar.com/star-awards-2018-gives-prizes-for-best-film-tv-series-fashion-statements/ |archive-date=April 6, 2019 |website=New Light of Myanmar}}Best ActressMi{{Won}}
2019[https://aseanfilmfestival.com/ ASEAN International Film Festival and Awards]Best ActressMi{{Nominated}}
2021

|Oldenburg International Film Festival

|Best Performance (Seymour Cassel Award)

|What Happened to the Wolf?

| {{Nominated}}

2024

|Oldenburg International Film Festival

|Honorary Tribute Award{{Cite news |last=Roxborough |first=Scott |date=August 20, 2024 |title=Oldenburg Festival Unveils Competition Lineup, Tribute to Exiled Filmmakers |url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/oldenburg-film-festival-2024-competition-lineup-myanmar-tribute-1235978929/?fbclid=IwY2xjawFGJrpleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHaWqcAg4mIowUjZDAnJekTFP1yog0TX3-SF0M2JUIl-pjcEGbdK6Na1JPg_aem_omv1Ji318mhG88wd396z7Q |work=The Hollywood Reporter}}

| -

| {{Won}}

References

{{reflist}}