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Gong Li
 Name:
Gong Li
Date of Birth: 31 December 1965
Birth Place: Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China
Sometimes Credited As: Lei Gung
Born in 1965 in northeastern Shenyang, Gong was the youngest daughter
of an economics professor. She knew from a young age that she wanted to
be an actress, and at school she excelled at singing and dancing almost
to the exclusion of other subjects. In spite of failing her college exam
twice, she was eventually accepted to the Beijing Central College of Drama
in 1985. At that time, Chinese cinema was experiencing a renaissance after
the tumult of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth
(1984) had just taken the Hong Kong International Film Festival by storm,
heralding the rise of the Fifth Generation of filmmakers. One of these
young directors was Zhang, the cinematographer for Yellow Earth, who cast
Gong in his debut project, Red
Sorghum (1987). Immediately a critical and commercial success both
abroad and at home, the film garnered the Golden Bear award at the 1987
Berlin Film Festival and thrust both director and star into the international
limelight.
One of China's leading young stars of the 1980s and 90s, Gong has appeared
in films by other directors ("The
Empress Dowager" 1988, directed by Li Hanxiang; "The Terra
Cotta Warrior", in which she acted opposite Zhang) but it is in Zhang's
films that she is best known internationally. Slender and demure-looking
but possessing a naturalistic verve and strength onscreen, Gong Li embodies
a new generation of Chinese women, brought up amid ancient tradition but
reaching toward feminist values. In the title role of "Ju
Dou" (1990), she played a married woman whose torrid affair with
her husband's nephew brings about tragic consequences, while in "Raise
the Red Lantern" (1991) her character also causes trouble as
the newest addition to a man's bevy of wives. Gong Li ventured into comedy
with another eponymous heroine in "The
Story of Qiu Ju" (1992) as a woman farmer determined to avenge
an injustice done to her husband. In 1993, Gong Li starred in a film by
another Fifth Generation stalwart, Chen Kaige, "Farewell to My Concubine"
which shared the Palme d'Or at Cannes for best picture.
Zhang once again directed Gong Li in the well-received historical epic
"To Live" (1994), which followed a married couple over 30 years
of modern Chinese history. Uncharacteristically, Gong Li's role as a devoted
wife and mother was overshadowed by that of a strong male lead, actor
Ge You, who played her husband. The pair's next collaboration "Shanghai
Triad" (1995) offered Gong Li a tour-de-force role as a nightclub
chanteuse and gangster's moll. She reunited with Chen Kaige for "Temptress
Moon" (1996), in which she essays the role of an isolated, spoiled
heiress. A year later, Gong made her English-language debut in Wayne Wang's
"Chinese Box,” staring opposite Jeremy Irons. She returned her
native land for her next feature, “Piao liang ma ma” (“Breaking
the Silence,” 1999), China’s official entry for the Academy
Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2000 about a hard-working single
mom who struggles to earn enough money to buy a new hearing aid for her
son. Gong Li won Best Actress at the 2000 Montreal World Film Festival
for her performance.
Gong Li went on to star in what was reported as the most expensive Asian
film to date, “The
Emperor and the Assassin” (1999), a sweeping historical epic set in
feudal China during the 3rd century B.C about the first emperor of a unified
China (Li Xuejian), the man sworn to kill him (Zhang Fengyi) and the woman
loved by both (Gong Li). In “Zhou
Yu’s Train” (2003), she played a painter at a ceramic factory who
has fallen in love with a reticent poet (Tony Leung) with whom she travels
by train every weekend to engage in a passionate love affair. But on one
trip to meet her lover, she meets a cynical traveling veterinarian (Sun
Honglei) who also manages to win her affections. Gong Li next appeared
in “Eros”
(2004), an anthology with short features about eroticism and desire helmed
by Wong Kar Wai, Steven Soderbergh and Michelangelo Antonioni. In Wong
Kar Wai’s piece “The Hand,” she starred as a refined Hong Kong prostitute
who seduces a young virginal tailor (Chang Chen) when he arrives at her
home for a fitting.
Gong Li reunited with Wong Kar Wai on his magnificently flawed epic, “2046”
(2005), a loosely related continuation of the director’s lyrical
love story, “In the Mood for Love” (2001). She then had a supporting
role in the high profile “Memoirs
of a Geisha” (2005), the story of a Japanese girl torn from her
penniless family and raised in a geisha house where she blossoms into
the legendary geisha, Sayuri (Zhang ZiYi).
Gong Li played an aging geisha jealous of Sayuri’s ability to captivate
the most powerful men in the world. She was then set to star in two big
budget features: “Miami Vice” (2006), a remake of the popular
1980s television show starring Jamie Foxx and Colin Ferrell, and “Behind
the Mask” (2006), a thriller that follows serial killer Hannibal
Lecter’s childhood in Lithuania to his arrival in the United States.
Both features promised to turn Gong Li into a household name in the states
despite her long career in film.
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