Zhang Ziyi Biography
Zhang Ziyi is a Chinese actress and dancer best known in the west for her roles in films like Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. She has also worked as a model and has ventured into singing. Zhang Ziyi was born on February the 9, 1979, in Beijing. Her father Zhang Yuanxiao was an economist and her mother, Li Zhousheng, a kindergarten teacher. She has a brother, Zhang Zinan, who runs an advertising agency and acts as her agent in China. As a young child, she was fragile and underweight, so her concerned parents sent her to dance and gymnastics classes in the hope that this would help her to build muscle. Of her own volition she joined the Beijing Dance Academy at the age of eleven and went on to win a place in the Central Drama College six years later. Whilst studying there she auditioned for a shampoo commercial to be directed by Zhang Yimou; though she was unsuccessful, she made such an impression that the director remembered her and later cast her in his award-winning love storyThe Road Home.
With such an impressive start, Zhang never needed to struggle to get noticed. Ang Lee was so taken with her performance that he immediately offered her the role of the lovelorn Jen Yu in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, alongside Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh, making her an international star. Hollywood then came calling with the role of femme fatale Hu Li in Rush Hour 2, but Zhang had a problem - she couldn't speak a word of English. Nevertheless, with Jackie Chan instructing and advising her, she turned in an impressive performance and decided to start learning the language so that she could expand her options as an actress.
Before she moved to Hollywood, Zhang Yimou again cast Zhang in one of his epic historical dramas, Hero, with Jet Li and Maggie Cheung. As in his later House of Flying Daggers, in which she played a mysterious rebel loved by Takeshi Kaneshiro and Andy Lau, this required her to perform martial arts, something in which she had no training. To get around this problem, most of her fighting scenes were re-choreographed using dance moves. She would later have the chance to use her dance skills in a more traditional manner in the award-winning operetta Princess Raccoon, opposite Jo Odagiri, gaining a Golden Globe nomination. She also demonstrated her skill as a singer, performing the traditional song Jia Rén Qu for the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon soundtrack.
In 2005, Zhang scored another big international hit, taking the lead in Rob Marshall's Memoirs of a Geisha, co-starring with Ken Watanabe and Gong Li. This helped to damp down accusations of rivalry and of an affair with Zhang Yimou, to whom Gong had formerly been mistress and muse. The film won several Oscars and Zhang was again nominated for a Golden Globe.
With such striking looks, it wasn't long until Zhang came to the attention of western modelling agencies. Articulate as well as beautiful, she went on to lend her talents as spokesmodel to Lenovo Computers, Coca Cola, Pantene, Tag Heuer watches and Maybelline. Several magazines have listed her among the most beautiful women in the world, but she remains modest, pointing out that, in China, beauty is judged as much by what is underneath a person's skin and can only be known after that person has been around for a long time. |
