Zhou Xun is Back!

MyStarHill > Celebrities, Chinese > Zhou Xun is Back!

Author: teropong | December 11, 2007 - 12:00 pm

After disappearing under the movie radar for a year, Zhou Xun, last seen in The Banquet, now stars in a new mystery thriller.

IT HAS been a year since China-born actress Zhou Xun was seen on the big screen.

After her role in last year’s period epic, The Banquet, starring opposite fellow Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi and Hong Kong-based actor Daniel Wu, she took a break to recharge.

Now the 30-year-old is back in action, in a mystery thriller, Li Mi De Zao Yu (Li Mi’s Encounters).

In the indie film directed by newcomer Cao Baoping, she plays a cabby whose boyfriend goes missing, and she discovers that he is a drug trafficker.

“The title Li Mi’s Encounters intrigued me – what kind of encounters did she have? That made me want to go back to the movies,” says Zhou Xun in a telephone interview from the set in Yunnan recently.

The year-long hiatus has not really been a holiday, she laments. For the past year, besides reading scripts, Zhou Xun, one of China’s hottest exports, also travelled to cities such as Barcelona and Paris for fashion events and magazine shoots.

She remarks: “As an actress, the line between your work and your life is blurred. You are on holiday, but because of the nature of the job, you attract attention.”

Because of her frequent travels to Europe, rumours have surfaced that she secretly married her boyfriend of three years, Taiwanese stylist Li Da Chih, 37,

She laughs. “The paparazzi love to exaggerate. The funniest one I heard was about an elaborate French wedding that I was supposed to have had,” she says.

For the record, the couple is “getting along very well”, but marriage is not yet on the cards due to their busy schedules.

Zhou Xun says: “I value freedom a lot, and I like doing things on a whim. I haven’t thought too much about it.”

Her bohemian personality contrasts with that of her character’s in The Banquet – Qing Nu, the daughter of a palace official who observes social norms to a T, is torn between the man she loves and obeying her father’s wishes.

Zhou Xun compares herself with Qing: “She is a victim of circumstance. In her era, she could not choose how to live her life. In this day and age, I’m glad that I have a choice.”

Born in Zhejiang, the graduate of Zhejiang Arts Institute made her film debut with Inside an Old Grave (1991), a horror movie.

However, it was not until she starred in Chinese art house director Lou Ye’s film noir, Suzhou River, (2000) that critics sat up and took notice.

Her fame soared in 2002, after she played the spunky heroine Huang Rong of novelist Louis Cha’s wuxia stories in the drama serial, Legend of the Condor Heroes.

The Chinese media then dubbed her – together with actresses Zhang Ziyi, Zhao Wei and Xu Jinglei – one of the four most promising female stars in the country.

Since then, Zhou Xun has taken on high-profile projects, including the Hong Kong musical, Perhaps Love (2005), in which she co-stars with Jacky Cheung and Takeshi Kaneshiro, and The Banquet.

source : The Straits Times, Singapore/ Asia News Network

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.