A delicately beautiful Chinese actress, Ziyi Zhang first caught the attention of filmgoers at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival with her debut performance as a young girl who falls in love with a schoolteacher in "The Road Home", director Zhang Yimou's acclaimed drama. Her strong performance (and the rumors of a romance with the director) led many Asian journalists to dub the newcomer "little Gong Li," after the director's former leading lady. Within three months, she enjoyed a further career boost when the martial arts romance "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" premiered at Cannes. Her performance as the headstrong Jen Wu, a sheltered aristocrat with a taste for adventure, anchored the movie and demonstrated her astonishing range. Whether executing the daring almost balletic martial arts fight sequences or engaging in a spirited battle of wills with the bandit who has kidnapped her (seen in a lengthy flashback), Ziyi Zhang proved irresistible.
The daughter of an economist and a teacher, Ziyi Zhang was enrolled in dance school in her native Beijing at a young age. After winning an award at a national competition at age 15, she began appearing in Hong Kong television commercials. Spotted by Zhang Yimou, the young actress was offered the leading role in "The Road Home" (1999), a beautiful romance about a young woman's undying love in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. She added to her rising star status with "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000), then had a co-starring role in Tsui Hark's sequel "Zu, Warriors from the Magic Mountain 2" (2001). The actress made her American debut co-starring with Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan in the successful, but contrived sequel, "Rush Hour 2" (2001), playing a dangerous femme fatale, a role in which she struggled with uneven English.
Ziyi Zhang then segued into a towering cinematic and commercial triumph, "Ying xiong" (2002), which was released in the United States in 2004 under the title "Hero." Ziyi Zhang reunited with Zhang Yimou to star alongside Jet Li, Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Daoming Chen and Donnie Yen for the big-budget tale set at the violent dawn of the Qin dynasty (circa 220 B.C.) where the soon-to-be first Emperor is on the brink of conquering the war-torn land. The emperor, however, is threatened with assassination and hides himself in the Forbidden City where a lowly policeman (Jet Li) hears his story about the country's three most feared assassins-Broken Sword, Flying Snow and Sky. The film become a phenomenal hit in Asia and Europe, and was nominated for an Oscar in 2003 in the foreign language category before its North American release in 2004.
In "Purple Butterfly" (2004), a historical romance about the innocence of new love torn asunder by the Sino-Japanese War, Ziyi Zhang played Ding Hui, a beautiful Chinese girl in love with a Japanese man (Toru Nakamura) whose brief love affair ends when he's shipped off to join the military. After Japan's occupation of Shanghai, Ding Hui joins a resistance movement that plans to assassinate the head of the Japanese secret service and boss of her old flame. Just weeks after the release of "Purple Butterfly" in the America, Ziyi Zhang was seen again in another high profile film from Zhang Yimou, "House of Flying Daggers" (2004), a stunningly visual martial arts romance set in 9th century China during the decline of the once-flourishing Tang Dynasty. As Mei, a blind dancer who leads a policeman (Andy Lau) to the secret lair of a group of wanted assassins, The Flying Daggers, the actress gave a nuanced performance that juggled a superficial innocence with darker ulterior motives and a descent into love despite nefarious intentions. Widespread critical praise and box office success helped elevate Ziyi Zhang into a rare high profile Chinese actress in the United States.
For her next film, Wong Kar Wai's hypnotic "2046" (2005), Ziyi Zhang displayed a simmering intensity in her performance as a high class prostitute residing next to a struggling author of erotic fiction (Tony Leung) in a rundown hotel with whom she engages in a love affair doomed to end in bitterness and tears. She next starred in "Operetta Tanuki Goten" (2005), a strange fairy tale about weird raccoon-like creatures living atop a mountain ruled by a vengeful princess (Ziyi Zhang). "Memoirs of a Geisha" (2005), Rob Marshall's long-awaited adaptation of Arthur Golden's best-selling novel about a poor Japanese girl torn from her home and raised in a geisha house, poised Ziyi Zhang to become a household name in the states. Under the tutelage of the famed Mameha (Michelle Yeoh), the girl develops into Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang), a beautiful and accomplished geisha who captivates some of the most powerful men in the world, but is haunted by a secret love for the one man beyond her reach (Ken Watanabe). Meanwhile, she filmed "Ye Yan" (lensed in 2005) in Hong Kong, a drama set in ancient China about the mysterious death of the emperor and the ensuing battle for his throne. |
