Gong making a bigger bang in Hollywood
After more than a decade as a superstar of Chinese cinema, Gong Li finally has come to Hollywood.
“Miami Vice” – in which Gong plays a drug-money launderer who’s sleeping with the enemy, undercover cop Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) – is the second of three big English-language productions the actress shot back-to-back.
Last year, she played a Japanese geisha conniving against a young rival (Ziyi Zhang) in “Memoirs of a Geisha.”
Due out in 2007 is “Young Hannibal,” with Gong co-starring in a prequel to “The Silence of the Lambs” that traces the teen years of future serial killer Hannibal Lecter.
Gong, 40, got her start in 1988’s “Red Sorghum,” beginning an artistic and romantic partnership with Zhang Yimou, one of China’s premier directors, which ended in the mid-1990s.
But they’re working together again on “Curse of the Golden Flower,” co-starring Chow Yun-Fat in a tale of palace intrigue in ancient China, scheduled for U.S. release in December.
Q: You’ve turned down offers from Hollywood before. Why was now the right time?
A: In the past, people have approached me before to play, for example, a girl in James Bond movies, things like that. … They were just kind of a pretty face, perhaps, kind of a pretty Asian woman, so there didn’t seem to be very much substance there for me to really develop the character. But nowadays, there are fewer offers like that and more of these serious ones, where the script is much better developed and the character is full.
Q: You and Colin Farrell take some fast-boat rides in “Miami Vice.” What was that like?
A: It was pretty scary. I’d never been in a fast boat like that before, so I was a little bit scared at first. But afterward, you realize that’s just the way it is. There’s nothing to be scared of.
Q: Did you get to drive the boat?
A: They wouldn’t let me do it. … It was actually pretty dangerous.
Q: Do Asian actors have more opportunities in Hollywood nowadays?
A: I hope it’s not just kind of passing fashion for a new kind of face, like Asian faces. What’s important is for this kind of interaction as artists. It doesn’t really matter who you are, what your racial or ethnic background is. Everybody around the world can communicate in this way. So what I hope for is longer-term cooperation in working together.
The birthday bunch
Director Peter Bogdanovich is 67. Singer Paul Anka is 65. Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is 59. Actress Delta Burke is 50. Actor Laurence Fishburne is 45. Actress Lisa Kudrow (“Friends”) is 43. Actress Hilary Swank is 32. Actress Jaime Pressly (“My Name is Earl”) is 29.