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ZhangZiyiINFOS
Your best online source for the Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi since 2007

Zhang Ziyi Infos

Everything about the talented Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi
Welcome to Zhang Ziyi Infos, your best source for the Chinese actress since 2007. Zhang Ziyi is a famous actress known for her roles in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Grandmaster and so many other great films. Zhang Ziyi recently directed the short film Poem in the anthology film My Country, My Parents. Read her full biography here.
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Esquire

A Woman We Love: Ziyi Zhang

January 01, 2006   |   Written by Reed Tucker

Call her Ziyi Zhang or Zhang Ziyi. Either way, she’s a Woman We Love.

Ziyi Zhang (or Zhang Ziyi, as she’s known in China) has just checked herself into a Beijing hospital. She is suffering from a mysterious respiratory ailment that she developed on the set of the Chinese film The Banquet. We feel for her. But for the doctors on duty, the shift just got a lot more interesting. The five-foot-five, twenty-six-year-old Zhang is among the most delicately beautiful women in the world, and roles in Hero, House of Flying Daggers, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon have made her a superstar in her country. Zhang grew up in Beijing, the daughter of an economist and a teacher, and was discovered by director Zhang Yimou at an audition for a shampoo commercial. This month., she stars in Memoirs of a Geisha, her first role in English – a language she only began learning a few years ago at the suggestion of director Ang Lee.

A Woman We Love

ESQ: What are you doing in the hospital? And you better not say bird flu.

ZZ: I feel sick for a couple of weeks. They think something wrong with – what’s that called? – windpipe. The conditions are very bad in China. There is much pollution inside the studio. We build a whole palace inside the studio and they use very bad…gas? [In the background, her translator says, “Fumes.”] Fumes!

ESQ: You live in Beijing in an apartment with your parents, right?

ZZ: Yes. When I was eleven, I went to boarding school. I left home to study on my own, so I didn’t spend that much time with my parents. So now I have chance to spend time with them.

ESQ: Do they have lots of rules?

ZZ: I have freedom. I’m big girl. They’re pretty – how you say? – relaxed. But they’re proud of me. My daddy always asks my autograph for his friends, his leaders.

ESQ: What was it like coming to America for the first time?

ZZ: That was 1999, I think. I was nineteen. I only had one idea: I wanted to go to the real McDonald’s.

ESQ: You and Yao Ming are supposedly the two most famous people in China. You should date.

ZZ: Nooo. He’s such a big boy.

ESQ: How is being famous in China different from in America?

ZZ: I think it’s much relaxed here. The paparazzi is not so crazy. I’m happy to be here and have no – how you say? – stalker.

ZZ: Do you find it strange that Chinese actors were cast to play Japanese women in Memoirs of a Geisha?

ZZ: I don’t feel strange, because that’s my job, to play different kind of people. It’s really hard for us to learn how to be a – what’s that word? I learn last night? Ah, yes. Convincing. Convincing geisha.

ESQ: You were recently invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

ZZ A big honor. I have chance to watch great movies.

ESQ: And some not so great.

ZZ: Yes. But I think I can raise my – how you say? [long burst of Mandarin to translator] – level.

ESQ: What’s the best Hollywood movie you’ve seen recently?

ZZ: I like Cinderella Man.

ESQ: Did you watch it in English or dubbed?

ZZ: I got it in Mandarin. We don’t have so many American movies showing in Beijing, in China. I think every year we only have ten American movies. Not that much. We have [rapid-fire Mandarin to translator, then slowly] censorship bureau. They have to give, uh, permission.

ESQ: The Chinese people and press didn’t really embrace you earlier in your career. Is that changing?

ZZ: Yeah, I think it’s much better now, because people understand I don’t just rely on my looks. Because when I get very famous very fast, at that time I was only like nineteen, and they just thought, She’s nothing, she’s just luck. Now I really don’t care, because I know that I just do my movies, and if I do great job, you will see it. It’s not easy to act.

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