In the mood for oriental siren Zhang Ziyi
By ELIZABETH WEITZMAN (New York Daily)
Updated: 2005-08-04 14:48

Imagine a young, virtually unknown movie actress stealing a blockbuster out from under Denzel Washington and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

World acclaimed actress Zhang Ziyi greets fans at Wangfujing, downtown biz pedestrian walk in Beijing, April 28, 2005, during a promotion event for a US-based cosmetics products that she image presents. [newsphoto]

And then, a few years later, she shines so brightly that her co-stars - let's say Nicole Kidman, Hilary Swank, Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt - are left in the shadows. And by the time she reaches her mid-20s, nearly every major director in the country has lined up to work with her.

Sound unlikely? Welcome to the extraordinary career of Zhang Ziyi. Of course, the 26-year-old actress hasn't taken on those Hollywood stars yet, but she has outshone China's and Hong Kong's equivalents.

A Beijing-born dancer and student discovered during an audition for a shampoo commercial, she started out in Zhang Yimou's lyrical drama "The Road Home" in 1999.

But she made her first big impact the following year, in Ang Lee's period epic, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

A Hong Kong action film with an arthouse sensibility, "Dragon" should have been the vehicle that enabled long-established Asian superstars Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh to become fixtures on the American movie scene.

Instead, all eyes were on Zhang, whose ethereal beauty and balletic grace only enhanced the strength and ferocity of her martial-arts moves. And when "Dragon" became the biggest-selling foreign film of all time, few gave the credit to Chow or Yeoh.

Since then, Zhang has made box-office smashes like "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers" in China and "Rush Hour 2" in America. But her heart, she insists, remains in small films that tell intimate stories.

Next Friday she stars in "2046," a smoky, nostalgia-tinged anti-romance directed by Wong Kar-wai. The cast features some of the biggest names in East Asian cinema, including Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, Gong Li and Faye Wong. But once again, it is Zhang's intricate performance that will electrify audiences. It is, says Nick James, editor of the British film magazine "Sight and Sound," "the perfect evocation of erotic mystery."

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