Zhang Ziyi

Zhang Ziyi’s path to the screen began in Beijing, where she was born on 9 February 1979 to an accountant father and a kindergarten teacher mother. At age 8 she started nine years of folk dance training, and at 11 she joined the Affiliated Secondary School of Beijing Dance Academy, a boarding school whose strict culture she found so harsh she once ran away. In 1994 she won the performance award at the National Taoli Cup Dance Competition, and in 1996 she entered the Central Academy of Drama, making her acting debut that same year in the television film “Touching Starlight”.

Her breakthrough came in 1998 when director Zhang Yimou cast her in “The Road Home” (1999), earning her Best Actress at the 23rd Hundred Flowers Awards. International fame followed with Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000). She then made her Hollywood debut as a villain in “Rush Hour 2” (2001), starred in “Hero” (2002) and “House of Flying Daggers” (2004), and appeared in “Memoirs of a Geisha” (2005) and Seijun Suzuki’s “Princess Raccoon”.

Her collaboration with Wong Kar-wai brought a Hong Kong Film Award for Best Actress for “2046” (2004) and, for “The Grandmaster” (2013), twelve Best Actress awards—making her the most awarded Chinese actress for a single film. One of China’s Four Dan actresses, she ranked in the Top 5 of the Forbes China Celebrity 100 every year from 2004 to 2010, received the Outstanding Contribution to Chinese Cinema award at the 11th Shanghai International Film Festival, and was named by Time as “China’s gift to Hollywood” and one of its 100 Most Influential People in 2005. In 2013, France awarded her the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.