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Zhang
Zi Yi
 Biography
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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.
Born : 02/09/1979 in
Beijing, China
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