Gong Li breaks records in Curse of the Golden Flower
Gong Li has been called China’s Greta Garbo, and the similarities are obvious. Like Garbo, she has an unimaginable beauty, a remarkable acting range and an intense desire for privacy.
Gong Li has been called China’s Greta Garbo, and the similarities are obvious. Like Garbo, she has an unimaginable beauty, a remarkable acting range and an intense desire for privacy.
Born in Shenyang, China, she grew up in Jinan, the daughter of an economics professor. Gong dreamed of a singing career, but when she failed to gain entrance to China’s top music school, she opted for the Central Drama Academy in Beijing.
Gong’s talent and presence were quickly noticed by Zhang Yimou. He cast her in Red Sorghum in 1987 while she was still a student. The film launched both of their careers. Along with the film itself, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, Gong’s performance, as the meek bride who becomes a powerful woman after her husband’s death, won international acclaim. Li quickly went on to become one of China’s leading young actresses of the “80s and “90s.
Gong Li embodies a new generation of Chinese women, brought up amid old traditions but reaching towards feminist values.
Gong was linked with Zhang Yimou both professionally and romantically for several years. He directed her in some of the most memorable Chinese films of the last decade – “ Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991), The Story of Qui Ju (1992) for which she won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, To Live (1994), and Shanghai Triad (1995). She has also worked with other Chinese directors, particularly Chen Kaige, with who she has collaborated on three highly regarded features – “ Farwell My Concubine, which won the 1993 Palme d’Or at Cannes, Temptress Moon (1996), and The Emperor and the Assassin (1999).
She served as a member of the jury at the 50th Cannes Festival in 1997 and president over the jury at 2000’s Berlin Festival and has lent her name to campaigns for children’s and environmental protection. On May 10, 2000 Gong Li was named UNESCO Artist for Peace in Paris by the Director-General of UNESCO in recognition of her dedication to the organization’s ideals and aims. She has also served as a consultant on various matters to the Chinese government.
In early 2001, she was the only Chinese actress picked by the Chinese government to be the image of Chinese Olympics. She traveled to Moscow with the Chinese Olympic Committee, led by the Vice Premier, for the successful bidding of the 2008 Olympics to be held in Bejing.
Breaking the Silence (2000), her first collaboration with director Sun Zhou, won her the Best Actress award at the Montreal Film Festival, the ninth China Golden Rooster Film Festival, and the China Hundred Flowers Film Award. It was chosen as the special screening film for the 2000 Berlin International Film Festival. Zhou Yu’s Train, a contemporary Chinese love story, was her second film with Sun Zhou.
In 2004, she joined the filming of Eros, an anthology of three films directed by Steven Soderberg, Michelangelo Antonioni and Wong Kar-Wai. The same year, the Cannes Film Festival named the Wong Kar-Wai romantic science-fiction drama 2046, in which Gong Li appeared more majestic than ever, as an official selection.
In her first American movie, Gong Li played a Japanese prostitute in Memoirs of a Geisha and followed in the American movie adaptation of Michael Mann’s famous television series Miami Vice with Colin Farrell.
After a 10 year hiatus of working together, Gong Li has once again teamed up with Chinese director Zhang Yimou in Curse of the Golden Flower which has already broken box office records and is generating Oscar buzz for Best Foreign Film. Asiance had a chance to speak with Gong Li on her recent trip to New York City promoting this ground breaking film.
ASIANCE: What and when piqued your interest in acting?
Gong Li: I started quite early and I didn’t have any ideas for other things to do so I applied and got into the Central Drama Academy in Beijing when I was 18.
ASIANCE: Are you constantly working on improving your craft?
Gong Li: No (laughs)
ASIANCE: Did you decide right away that you were going to do this film?
Gong Li: Well the main thing was because the director was Zhang Yimou and I had worked with him for about 10 years already. Of course I worked with him for 7 or 8 years in a row. Given the strength of the director and the cast and crew, especially the combination of some of the best actors in Asia, I wanted to do it. The whole package was quite appealing.
ASIANCE: Describe in your own words your character The Empress.
Gong Li: She has a very extravagant exterior and lives in this very sumptuous setting in China. But on the inside there is a kind of tragedy brewing for her. So that is how the story gets going.
ASIANCE: Please give us 3 words to describe your director.
Gong Li: Three words? Well there are so many things I can say about him. How about Zhang Yimou (pronounced yan-e-mo)? (laughs)
ASIANCE: What do you see as the future of the Chinese film industry? What does it need to compete with Hollywood and Bollywood?
Gong Li: It’s hard to say at this moment. Two things in particular have to do with directors and the subject matter that can be made into films. There is a process where films have to be submitted before production and that leads to narrowing possibilities of different kinds of materials and subject matter for scripts.
Then the other thing of course is in terms of the directors. There are some pretty big directors like Zhang Yimou and Tianming Wu. There are some other good directors but some of them haven’t quite caught up to them in terms of level of achievement. So it’s hard to say at this point how Chinese cinema should or would develop in order to compete with world cinema. But I think things will get better in the future certainly. After all we have thousands of years of history in China, so things will certainly get better eventually.
ASIANCE: What do you think of the Chinese government censoring imported movies or television when you can just see it on the internet?
Gong Li: Well it’s important to make some changes in the system. Because nowadays like you said even if the government says you can not show this film in the theaters people can always go out and buy pirated copies of DVD’s. Those things are very cheap, you can buy them everywhere in China. It’s not quite one U.S dollar. So as you can see it’s a very simple kind of problem that you really need to regulate pirated videos as well.
It calls for a reform in the whole system.
ASIANCE: Who are your favorite actors?
Gong Li: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro. I really like them. They are very strong actors and you can really see a lot of their abilities and power when they are performing. You can learn something from them too. So films like the Godfather! I love this film. I’ve seen it so many times. As far as actresses, Nicole Kidman. I really admire her.
ASIANCE: Who would you like to work with that you haven’t already?
Gong Li: There are so many people that I would love to work with. But what’s really important is to have a good director and good script to work with. If you are saying you just want to work together with someone for that purpose, it’s not necessarily a good use of time. For example, if I worked together with Al Pacino or Robert De Niro and we didn’t have a good script, then it would be a waste of the actors. It’s important to have the whole thing together.
ASIANCE: How dramatic have the changes in China been since you were a little girl? Give us some examples in film and being a woman.
Gong Li: As far as cinema goes, there have been all sorts of changes. When I made my first film, Red Sorghum, people didn’t pay much attention to publicity as they do now. We didn’t have the concept of doing publicity to promote a film. Attached to that, budgets were smaller in total amount, resources weren’t available. So as a result, directors couldn’t really create the films that they thought they could. Nowadays, of course, everything has become internationalized so that there is investment outside China and cooperative ventures, etc. This has really encouraged directors to think more imaginatively about what they can do with their films. So there is a great interest in this kind of input of things from the outside. Such that if we think about the old days we were so simple and foolish back then. We didn’t even think about doing things this way.
As far as being a woman, yeah I’ve seen lots of changes also. Mainly it’s that there a lot more opportunities to do all sorts of things, much more than my mother’s generation. Nowadays in China, if you are a woman, it’s sort of like life has become more colorful. There are all sorts of different opportunities and possibilities. It’s possible to have a very rich and full life. If you ask me if I would like to come live in America or somewhere abroad, I’d say no, I’m quite happy living in China. I have everything I want and everything I need there.
ASIANCE: What do you think of the current role Asian women play in the Hollywood movie industry and what would you like to see happen in the next 10 years?
Gong Li: Well overall there is a lot more opportunities for us working together (China and US). I guess this is sort of a general trend where people are more interested in Asia and Asian things, which is good. Not just for Chinese actresses but Bollywood actresses are also coming here to make films. It’s hard to say what kind of opportunities there will be but it’s good that the trend is moving that way. Things are becoming more and more a global village. This is a good thing. There are more opportunities to interact and fewer hurdles.
On the other hand, if you think about it in the opposite way, if an American actor or actress wants to go to China to make a film, it’s a little bit harder. If you go there, you can’t just speak English. It would be strange. Or if you wanted to speak Chinese it’s not something you can learn in 2 days, so it would be kind of hard. So if you think about it, it’s a little bit easier for an Asian actress coming to America or Europe because English is already an international language.
ASIANCE: What advice would you give to Asian girls who want to make it in the film industry?
Gong Li: For many people, being an actress is a dream, an important dream for them. But I do want to say that it’s also hard work. It might not be what you expected. You have to face all sorts of challenges. It’s not what just anyone can do. In fact I think being a good actress is 70% natural ability, so unfortunately if you don’t have that 70%, it’s hard to be a good actress. You have to face all sorts of challenges, hard work and put up with all sorts of things that you hadn’t thought about in advance.
ASIANCE: What is your beauty routine?
Gong Li: Haha! Nothing. I don’t do anything special. I hardly ever go to the spas.
Check out this hot video of Gong Li and Colin Farrell rehearsing for Miami Vice.
ASIANCE: What are you doing for your birthday (December 31st)?
Gong Li: The most important thing is to go home and visit my family, especially my mother. It’s important to me that I have the chance to spend time alone with them. As far as friends, I’d be happy to go out with them, but maybe on some other day. But since it’s New Year’s Eve, I’d rather spend it with my family.
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Photography by Anna Donovan
http://www.annadonovan.com/