Gong Li (simplified Chinese traditional Chinese (born December 31, 1965) is a Chinese-American two-time Golden Rooster, two-time Hundred Flowers Award,Berlinale Camera, Cannes Festival Trophy, National Board of Review, New York Film Critics Circle Award, and Volpi Cup winning Chinese film actress.
She first came into international prominence through close collaboration with Chinese director Zhang Yimou and is credited with helping bring Chinese cinema to Europe and the United States.
Gong Li was born in
Shenyang, Liaoning, China, the fifth child in her family. Her father was a professor of economics and her mother, who was 40 when
Gong was born, was a teacher.
Gong grew up in Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province. She wished to be an
actress from a young age. She was accepted to the Beijing Central College of Drama in 1985 and graduated in 1989.
She was a
student there when Zhang Yimou chose her in 1987 for the lead role in his first film as a director.
Over the next several years after her 1987 debut in Red Sorghum, Gong received both local and international acclaim for her roles in several more Zhang Yimou films, becoming his muse.
She appeared in Ju Dou in 1990. Her performance in the
Oscar-nominated Raise the Red Lantern thrust her into the international spotlight and The Story of Qiu Ju, for which she was named Best Actress at the 1992 Venice Film Festival. The roles help solidify her reputation as, according to Asiaweek, one of the "
world's most glamorous movie stars and an elegant throwback to Hollywood's golden era."
In 1993 she received a
New York Film Critics Circle award for her role in Farewell My Concubine. Directed by Chen Kaige, the film was at the time her first major role with a director other than
Zhang Yimou. In 2006, Premiere Magazine ranked her performance as the 89th greatest performance of all time.
