Zhang Ziyi Says a Week of Daily Hollywood Compliments Made Her Stop Believing Them. Then Ang Lee Didn’t Speak to Her for Six Months
Zhang Ziyi on the two directors who shaped her: “When I was working on Geisha, Memoirs of a Geisha, I got praised every day. The director was, ‘Oh, such a beautiful performance, you’re the best’. The first time I heard that, I said, ‘Oh, my god, that’s incredible’. I was thrilled. I’m so happy. But after one week, every day I heard something like this, I said, ‘Wait a minute’. Probably that’s the way he wants you to, you know, do it better or, you know, it’s a different way.”
“But when I’m shooting Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee didn’t say anything in six months until the last day. So every day when I finished work, I waited for extra 10 minutes. I was just sitting there. And I hoped if he can say something, ‘Oh, good job today’. But it never happened for six months. And that’s something hold me and work even harder and just for this. And at the end he said, and I couldn’t stop crying.”
Ang Lee gave Zhang Ziyi zero feedback for the entire shoot of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and it changed how she worked. In the film she played Jen Yu, a rebellious young Manchu noblewoman who secretly masters martial arts and steals the legendary Green Destiny sword — a role that demanded she perform many of her own stunts and wire work, including the celebrated bamboo forest duel with Michelle Yeoh. Her training as a dancer at the Beijing Dance Academy helped her carry off the balletic choreography, and critics praised the elegance, raw anger, and physical control she brought to the part.
The 2000 wuxia epic, a modestly budgeted multinational co-production directed by Lee, became a global phenomenon, earning more than $213 million and a then-record 10 Academy Award nominations for a non-English-language film. It took four Oscars — Best Foreign Language Film, Cinematography, Art Direction, and Original Score — and held the record as the highest-grossing foreign-language film in U.S. history for years. It was Zhang’s breakout on the world stage, and her performance drew a BAFTA nomination along with critics’ prizes and an Independent Spirit Award, establishing her as one of the leading actresses of Chinese-language cinema.
She learned the difference the hard way. On another film, Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, her director praised her constantly. The 2005 adaptation of Arthur Golden’s bestselling novel cast 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 celebrated geishas — a transformation she prepared for with intensive training in geisha arts, from dance and shamisen to the tea ceremony.
The film went on to win three Academy Awards, all in technical categories — cinematography, art direction, and costume design. The first “you’re the best” thrilled her, but a week of daily compliments left her wondering whether the words meant anything at all.
Lee’s silence did the opposite. Every day she sat and waited for a “good job,” and every day it didn’t come, so she dug in and tried to earn it.
Zhang, born in Beijing in 1979, had 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 she had worked with some of the most demanding filmmakers in the business — Zhang Yimou, who later directed her in Hero and House of Flying Daggers, and Wong Kar-wai, who directed her award-winning turn in 2046.
Over a career spanning martial-arts spectacle and quiet drama, she has been called one of the “Four Dan Actresses” of Chinese cinema and remains among its most internationally recognized stars.
The one time Lee finally spoke was on the final day of filming. That was when she couldn’t stop crying.
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