Zhou Xun

Zhou Xun arrived by the side door. Born in Quzhou, Zhejiang in 1974, she was an uncredited nightclub girl in Temptress Moon in 1996, and the parts that made her name came out of the Chinese independent films of the turn of the century rather than any studio pipeline: Meimei and Moudan in Suzhou River in 2000, Qin in Beijing Bicycle in 2001, the Little Seamstress in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress in 2002.

What she has that almost nobody of her generation has is a face that reads as young and knowing at once, and directors have used it relentlessly. She is cast again and again as the woman everyone in the room underestimates, and the pleasure of watching her is the moment a film finally lets her stop pretending. The Message in 2009 builds its whole architecture on that. The Equation of Love and Death lets her play it raw and without vanity.

She is counted among the Four Dan Actresses of China, and in 2009 she took Best Actress at the Golden Horse, Hong Kong Film and Golden Rooster awards, the three major Chinese-language prizes, inside a single year.

The 2010s were her commercial decade: Painted Skin and its sequel, The Banquet, True Legend, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, Confucius, big costume pictures that paid for the smaller ones. She took several roles in Cloud Atlas in 2012, led Our Time Will Come in 2017, and moved to television as the empress in Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace. Recent films include Across the Furious Sea and Hidden Blade.