Bai Ling - Acting Career

Acting Career

Ling had previously appeared in several Chinese movies. In 1984, Ling appeared as a fishing village girl in the movie On the Beach (海滩). Later she filmed several other movies, including Suspended Sentence (缓期执行), Yueyue (月月), Tears in Suzhou (泪洒姑苏) without much attention. She became famous after playing a girl with a psychological disorder who has an affair with her doctor, in the film Arc Light (弧光) directed by Zhang Junzhao (张军钊). She attended Moscow International Film Festival in 1989. Since coming to the United States in 1991, she has appeared in a number of American movies.

She appeared in The Crow (1994), playing the half-sister/lover of the main villain, Top Dollar. Hu guang was her most celebrated role in the Chinese film industry, and Red Corner (1997) would be considered her break-out role in English film. She was named one of People's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" in 1998. She appeared in Chris Isaak's music video "Please" in 1998. She shaved off her hair, which was longer than 36 inches (90 cm) for her role in Anna and the King, and is widely known in Thailand as "Tuptim", her character's name from the film, even though the movie is officially banned because of its depiction of the King of Siam. She filmed scenes for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) as Senator Bana Breemu, but her role was cut during editing. She claimed that this was because she posed nude in the June 2005 issue of Playboy magazine, whose appearance on newsstands coincided with the movie's May 2005 release, but director George Lucas denied this, stating that the cut had been made more than a year earlier. Her scenes were included in the "deleted scenes" feature of the DVD release.

In 2004, Ling starred in independent filmmaker Fruit Chan's Dumplings and the performance earned her the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Supporting Actress. In the same year she has been critically accaimed for her performance in another independent movie, The Beautiful Country, with Nick Nolte, by Hans Petter Moland.

Later in 2005, Ling was a cast member on the VH1 program called But Can They Sing?. The show gave several non-singer celebrities an opportunity to sing on every episode and then allowed the audience and home viewers to vote off one contestant each week. Bai Ling was most famous for her raunchy outfits and her performances of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" and The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated". Ling was eliminated just before the grand finale but was invited back in the final week for a special performance of Divinyls' "I Touch Myself".

In 2007, she starred as Coco in the film adaptation of the controversial Chinese contemporary novel, Shanghai Baby, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival, and she appeared in one episode ("Stranger in a Strange Land") of the show Lost.

Ling made a guest appearance on a episode of Entourage titled "China Town". She played a stunt co-ordinator named Li Lei, who sleeps with Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier).