Zhang Ziyi

Zhang Ziyi (born February 9, 1979, Beijing, China) is a Chinese actress noted for her versatility and beauty. Her performance in the martial-arts drama Wo hu cang long (2000; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) propelled her to international fame.

When Zhang was a child, her slight build worried her parents, so they enrolled her in dance classes to help strengthen her body. From age 11 she attended the Beijing Dance Academy, where she specialized in folk dance. At 17 she successfully auditioned for enrollment at the prestigious China Central Drama College, where she received her first formal acting lessons. While at the college filming a commercial, director Zhang Yimou saw her and cast her in her first film, Wo de fu qin mu qin (1999; The Road Home). The following year he recommended her to director Ang Lee for a role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Zhang earned praise for her portrayal of a headstrong young aristocrat with a secret life as a high-flying adventuress, and the film was an international success; it captured four Academy Awards and became the highest-grossing foreign-language film released in the United States.

Crouching Tiger led to a steady string of film roles for Zhang. She made her Hollywood debut in 2001 opposite Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in the action comedy Rush Hour 2. That year she also starred as a princess in the historical drama Musa (The Warrior). Zhang had another international hit with the Zhang Yimou-directed film Ying xiong (2002; Hero), which told the story of the first emperor of China. She subsequently appeared in Zi hudie (2003; Purple Butterfly), Mo li hua kai (2004; Jasmine Women), and Shi mian mai fu (2004; House of Flying Daggers). For her work in 2046 (2004), a science-fiction love story directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai, Zhang won best actress at the 2005 Hong Kong Film Awards.

Britannica Quiz

Pop Culture Quiz

Zhang earned further critical acclaim for the epic romance Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), the motion-picture adaptation of Arthur Golden’s best-selling 1997 novel. The film told the story of a famous geisha living in Kyōto, Japan, just before World War II. Zhang earned a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance in the title role. In 2005 she also starred in Operetta tanuki goten (Princess Raccoon), an elaborate musical adaptation of a Japanese folktale that was directed by legendary Japanese filmmaker Suzuki Seijun. Her subsequent films include Ye yan (2006; The Banquet), which was loosely based on William Shakespeare’s Hamlet; Mei Lanfang (2008), a biopic about the jingxi (Peking opera) star of the same name; and the thriller Horsemen (2009). In 2012 Zhang starred in an adaptation of the 18th-century French novel Dangerous Liaisons that transposed its setting to 1930s Shanghai.

In 2013 Zhang appeared in Yi dai zong shi (The Grandmaster), a biopic about Ip Man, Bruce Lee’s martial-arts teacher. She later starred in John Woo’s two-part historical epic The Crossing (2014) and The Crossing 2 (2015). In The Cloverfield Paradox (2018), the third installment in the Cloverfield horror series, Zhang was cast as an engineer aboard a space station. Her films from 2019 included the action adventure Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Pan deng zhe (The Climbers), about a Mount Everest expedition.