Zhang Ziyi
Zhang Ziyi is an actor, born 1979.
The Central Academy of Drama admitted her in 1996, and she was in front of a camera the same year, in the television film Touching Starlight. Zhang Yimou cast her in The Road Home in 1999, which won her Best Actress at the 23rd Hundred Flowers Awards, and a year later Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon made her internationally famous as Jen.
What followed is one of the fastest runs any actor had in the wuxia era: Hu Li in Rush Hour 2, Moon in Hero, Xiao Mei in House of Flying Daggers, Bai Ling in 2046, Sayuri in Memoirs of a Geisha. Those films are usually discussed in terms of her fighting, which is the least interesting thing about her. She is better when the camera is close and nothing is moving at all. That is true twice over in 2046 and The Grandmaster, where Gong Er is the best performance of her career and the film quietly belongs to her rather than to its title character.
Since then she has worked mostly in Chinese cinema across a wide spread of registers, The Crossing, The Wasted Times, The Climbers, Forever Young, alongside a run of Hollywood genre work that has not deserved her: Dr Ilene Chen in Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Tam in The Cloverfield Paradox, Kristen in Horsemen, and the voice of Karai in TMNT.
Movies (41)
- Rush Hour 2 (2001)
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
- Hero (2002)
- The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
- House of Flying Daggers (2004)
- TMNT (2007)
- Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)
- The Grandmaster (2013)
- The Founding of a Republic (2009)
- 2046 (2004)
- Dangerous Liaisons (2012)
- Zu Warriors (2001)
- Horsemen (2009)
- She's Got No Name (2025)
- The Banquet (2006)
- The Climbers (2019)
- The Road Home (1999)
- The Wasted Times (2016)
- My Country, My Parents (2021)
- My Country, My Parents (2021)
- The Warrior (2001)
- The Crossing I (2014)
- Forever Young (2018)
- The Crossing II (2015)
- My Wife is a Gangster 2 (2003)
- The Volunteers: To the War (2023)
- Dragon Girls! (2016)
- Princess Raccoon (2005)
- Forever Enthralled (2008)
TV (5)
Where to start with Zhang Ziyi
If there is one evening available, give it to The Grandmaster. Gong Er is the role that uses everything she can do, and the film is the most beautiful thing on this list by some distance.
For the famous version, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon holds up completely and is the correct introduction to the whole genre rather than only to her. House of Flying Daggers and Hero are the colour-drenched follow-ups. Hero is the better film, Flying Daggers gives her more to play.
Then go early and late. The Road Home is the small rural romance that started everything and she is almost unrecognisably soft in it. 2046 is the difficult one and worth the effort. Memoirs of a Geisha is the Hollywood attempt, a strange and compromised film that she is nonetheless very good in.