Zhang Ziyi Says A Week of Daily Hollywood Recommendations Made Her Stop Believing in Herself. Then Ang Lee Didn’t Talk To Him For Six Months

Zhang Ziyi to the two directors who shaped him: “When I worked on Geisha, Memoirs of a Geisha, I was praised every day. The director said, ‘Oh, such a good performance, you’re the best’. The first time I heard that, I said, ‘Oh, my god, that’s amazing’. I was happy. I was happy. But after a week I felt something, like I was very happy. ‘Wait a minute’ Maybe that’s the way he wants you to do it, you know, do it better or, you know, it’s a different way.

“But when I was filming Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee didn’t say anything for six months until the last day. So every day when I finished work, I would wait 10 extra minutes. I would sit there. And I was hoping that if he would say something, ‘Oh, good job today’. But it didn’t happen for six months. And that’s something that stuck with me and I ended up working even harder. crying.”

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Ang Lee gave Zhang Ziyi zero feedback throughout Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and it changed the way he worked. In the film she played Jen Yu, a rebellious young Manchu woman who secretly mastered and stole the famous Green Destiny sword – a role that required her to do a lot of stunts and rope work, including the famous bamboo forest duel with Michelle Yeoh. Her training as a dancer at the Beijing Dance Academy helped her to continue singing, and critics praised the beauty, anger, and body control she brought.

The 2000 wwuxia epic, a low-budget international co-production directed by Lee, became a worldwide phenomenon, earning over $213 million and a record 10 Academy Award nominations for a non-English language film. It took home four Oscars – Best Foreign Language Film, Cinematography, Art Direction, and Original Score – and held the record as the highest-grossing foreign language film in US history for years. It was Zhang’s breakthrough on the world stage, and his performance drew BAFTA nominations and critics’ awards as well as an Independent Spirit Award, establishing him as one of the leading actors in Chinese-language cinema.

He learned the difference the hard way. In another film, Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, her director praised her constantly. The 2005 adaptation of Arthur Golden’s best-selling novel stars Zhang in the lead role of Sayuri, a poor girl sold into a Kyoto geisha house who rises to become one of Japan’s most famous geisha – a transformation she prepared through intensive training in the geisha arts, from dance and shamisen to the tea ceremony.

The film went on to win three Academy Awards, all in the technical categories – cinematography, art direction, and costume design. The first “you’re the best” cheered her up, but a week of daily compliments left her wondering if the words meant anything.

Lee’s silence did the opposite. Every day he was waiting for a “good job,” and every day it didn’t come, so he dug around trying to find it.

Zhang, born in Beijing in 1979, trained in dance before studying acting at the Central Academy of Drama, and her first breakthrough came with Zhang Yimou’s The Road Home in 1999, which won her China’s Hundred Flowers Award for Best Actress. By the time of Crouching Tiger he had worked with some of the most sought-after filmmakers in the business – Zhang Yimou, who later directed him in Hero and House of Flying Daggers, and Wong Kar-wai, who directed his award-winning turn in 2046.

In martial arts and silent drama work, he has been called one of the “Four Dan Actors” of Chinese cinema and remains among the world’s most famous stars.

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The only time Lee finally spoke was on the last day of filming. That’s when he didn’t keep quiet.

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