Chinese name 章子怡
Pinyin Zhāng Zǐyí (Mandarin)
Origin People’s Republic of China
Born 9 February 1979 (1979-02-09) (age 32)
Beijing, China
Occupation Actress
Years active 1996–present
Zhang Ziyi(born 9 February 1979) is a
Chinese film
actress. Zhang is coined by the media as one of the Four Young Dan actresses (四小花旦) in the Film Industry in
China,
along with Zhao Wei, Xu Jinglei, and Zhou Xun. With a string of Chinese
and international hits to her name, she has worked with renowned
directors such as Zhang Yimou, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai, Chen Kaige, Tsui
Hark, Lou Ye, Seijun Suzuki, Feng Xiaogang and Rob Marshall.
She achieved wider fame in the West
after starring in major roles for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000),
Rush Hour 2 (2001), House of Flying Daggers (2004), and Memoirs of a
Geisha (2005). She has been nominated for numerous awards throughout her
career, including three BAFTA Award nominations and Golden Globe Award
nomination.
1999–2002
At the age of 19, Zhang was offered her first role in Zhang Yimou’s The Road Home, which won the Silver Bear award in the 1999 Berlin Film Festival.
She rose to further fame in 2000 with her role as Jen (Chinese version: Yu Jiao Long) in
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,
for which she won several awards in the Western world, such as Chicago
Film Critics Association Awards, Toronto Film Critics Association Awards
and Independent Spirit Awards. Zhang’s first appearance in an
American movie was in
Rush Hour 2,
but because she did not speak English at the time, Jackie Chan had to
interpret everything the director said to her. In the movie, her
character’s name is “Hu Li”, which is Mandarin Chinese for “Fox”.
Zhang then appeared in Hero
(2002), with her early mentor Zhang Yimou. This was a huge success in
the English-speaking world and was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden
Globe award in the category of Best Foreign Language Film.
2003–2006
She then signed on to film an
avant-garde drama,
Purple Butterfly (2003), which competed in the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. Zhang went back to the martial arts genre in
House of Flying Daggers (2004), which earned her a Best
Actress nomination from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. In
2046
(2004), directed by Wong Kar-wai, starring many of the best-known
Chinese actors and actresses, Zhang was the female lead and won the
Hong Kong Film Critics’ Best Actress Award and the Hong Kong Film
Academy’s Best Actress Award.
Showing her whimsical musical tap-dancing side, Zhang starred in
Princess Raccoon, directed by
Japanese
legend Seijun Suzuki, who was honored at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
She then accepted the lead role of Sayuri in the film adaptation based
on the international bestseller
Memoirs of a Geisha. Controversy arose in
Japan and
China about having a Chinese woman portray a Japanese geisha. For this film, she was reunited with her
2046 co-star Gong Li and with
Crouching Tiger
co-star Michelle Yeoh. For the role, Zhang received a 2006 Golden Globe
Award nomination, a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination and a BAFTA
nomination.
Zhang has also been known to sing, and was featured on the
House of Flying Daggers soundtrack with her own musical rendition of the ancient Chinese poem,
Jia Rén Qu (佳人曲,
The Beauty Song). The song was also featured in two scenes in the film.
On 27 June 2005, it was announced that
Zhang had accepted an invitation to join the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), placing her among the ranks of those able to
vote on the Academy Awards.[7] She then appeared as Empress Wan in The Banquet (2006), a film set in the Tang Dynasty.
2007–present
Zhang provided the voice of Karai in TMNT (2007). She later starred in Forever Enthralled (2008) and appeared in The Horsemen (2009) with Dennis Quaid.
In January 2010, it was announced she had plans to produce a film adaptation of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan; however, it was announced that she had turned down the role due to a busy schedule.
Zhang has been cast in the role of Lin Huiyin in a 2011 film.
Zhang is currently playing the titular heroine in Mulan,
a live-action version of the Chinese folk tale of Hua Mulan, previously
popularized around the world by Disney through their 1998 animated
movie. The film, which is directed by Jan de Bont, is expected to wrap
in January 2011.
Along with Aaron Kwok, Zhang stars in an AIDS-themed film “Life is a Miracle,” premiering on 10 May 2011.
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Ziyi
Morning dew
Together is beautiful
Life is to survive
Life is choice 
