Ziyi Zhang

Biography

Zhang Ziyi (born 9 February 1979) is a Chinese actress and model. She is regarded as one of the Four Dan Actresses of China. Her first major role was in The Road Home (1999). 

She later gained international recognition for her role in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), which was nominated for 10 Academy Awards. Zhang has also appeared in Rush Hour 2 (2001), Hero (2002), and House of Flying Daggers (2004). 

Her most critically acclaimed works are Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), which earned her nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Drama, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role; and The Grandmaster (2013), for which she won 12 different Best Actress awards to become the most awarded Chinese actress for a single film.

From 2004 to 2010, Zhang ranked in the Top 5 of the Forbes China Celebrity 100 list every year. In 2008, she was awarded with the Outstanding Contribution to Chinese Cinema award at the 11th Shanghai International Film Festival. In 2013, she received the French Cultural Order at the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Zhang most recently appeared in the films The Cloverfield Paradox (2018) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019).

Zhang was born and raised in Beijing, China on 9 February 1979. Her father, Zhang Yuanxiao, was an accountant and later an economist, and her mother, Li Zhousheng, was a kindergarten teacher. She has an older brother with whom she is very close.

Zhang began studying dance when she was 8 years old; subsequently, she joined the Beijing Dance Academy at her parents' suggestion at the age of 11. While at this boarding school, she noticed how mean the other girls were to each other while competing for status among the teachers. 

Zhang disliked the attitudes of her peers and teachers so much that, on one occasion, she ran away from the school. At the age of 15, Zhang won the national youth dance championship and also appeared in a handful of TV commercials and began appearing in television commercials in Hong Kong.

In 1996, Zhang entered the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing at the age of 17.