Academy Award-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio launched his account on China's social network platform Weibo.com, attracting a million fans within half a day.
"Hello, China! I'm Leonardo," he wrote in his first simple microblog post on Saturday afternoon. The post quickly received more than 140,000 retweets, 150,000 comments and 530,000 "likes" by Sunday noon, while the number of Weibo followers reached one million.
"Welcome to Weibo! We are so excited that Chinese fans can take a step closer to you, and know more things about you and your films. Hope we will have good communication!" one Weibo user wrote back.
Many also posted some hilarious screen grabs of DiCaprio's facial expressions and body movements from his movies or the events he had attended, which the internet users had been using as real-human emoticons for a long time.
A fan explained in his comment, "Hello! We hope you will love these expression packs, which represent our enthusiasm. You know, the more expression packs you have, the more popular you are in China."
DiCaprio has been very popular in China since "Titanic" in 1997. He was in Beijing in March to promote "The Revenant," the movie that earned him his first Best Actor success at the Oscars, while fans and bodyguards flooded the hotel in which he was staying.
Several big Hollywood stars, such as Robert Downey Jr, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Sebastian Stan, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Beyoncé, Bruno Mars and Simon Pegg, had previously opened Weibo accounts for more convenient communications with their fans and better promotion of their projects in the Chinese market. However, most of the accounts are updated and maintained by their Chinese agents.
Source: china.org