The actress, now 20, is the subject of excitable reviews for her role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. A Beijing native, Zhang was encouraged by her economist father and kindergarten-teacher mother to enroll in a dance school. It took three years of training there before, at the age of 15, she decided she was headed in the wrong direction. "No one makes a living out of dancing," she declares. "The best you can hope for is a job at some dance hall or with a dance troupe. The training and sacrifices aren't in proportion to the returns."

Zhang Ziyi chose instead to go into the China Central Drama Academy. But her future in the movies already seems made. Even before Crouching Tiger was released, she had been cast in Tsui Hark's coming production, Sword Of Zu, a remake of Warriors of Zu Mountain. As movie-goers digest her performance in Crouching Tiger, Zhang appears mature beyond her years

Impulsive, naughty, poised yet childlike, Zhang is the daughter of an economist father and a kindergarten teacher mother, and is a native Beijinger. Zhang feels she worked hard from an early age. She left home at 11 and remembers climbing out of bed at 5 a.m. to study gymnastics and never sleeping until 11 p.m. Competition was an early feature of her life. "The girls at my school were competing for status, for leadership, for the affection of teachers. And I hated it. It was a dark time." So dark that she ran away from school at 13, causing her parents to call the police to track her down. "I wanted to escape so badly, so I hid in a little thicket of grass. I could hear all the teachers calling my name, but it was only when I heard my Mom's voice that I came out. It was a fleeting kind of escape."-Time Asia, Dec/11/00

Her first film was 1999's "The Road Home,"directed by the renowned director Zhang Yi-mou. The film, which will be released by Sony Picture Classics in 2001, went on to garner the Jury Grand Prix Silver Bear at the 2000 edition of the Berlin Film Festival.

On June 26th, 2000, she demanded 10 million RMB for any role in comercial ads, setting an astonishing record for the industry.