Bai Ling: Biography

By Linnie Rawlinson for CNN

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"I'm a risk taker, an adventurer, a romantic dreamer."

Playful, mysterious and surrounded by rumors, Chinese actress Bai Ling is as notorious for her red-carpet wardrobe malfunctions as for her acting.

Born in Szechwan in 1970 and raised primarily by her grandmother, Bai served in the People's Liberation Army in Tibet as a teenager and says she witnessed the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. She came to the USA in 1991 and landed her first role as "Top Dollar" in "The Crow" (1994).

Her Hollywood breakthrough came in 1997 when she played a Chinese defense lawyer in Red Corner opposite Richard Gere. It got her into trouble with the Chinese authorities, her passport was revoked and in 1999 she was granted US citizenship.

That same year, she received acclaim for her sensitive portrayal of the king's concubine, Tuptim in "Anna and the King". In 2004, she played a mysterious kidnapper in "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" where she "had so much fun kicking Jude Law's butt!" She won a Golden Horse award (the Asian equivalent of an Oscar) for her role as a cannibalistic cook in "Dumplings" (2004).

A small role in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (2005) was left on the cutting room floor; however, Bai's claims that this was because of her June 2005 Playboy cover were denied by George Lucas.

She is currently filming "In New Times", a torrid tale of a Chinese waitress torn by her love for two men, one a drug user, the other a Western married man, based on the bestselling book, "Shanghai Baby".

Select filmography
In New Times (2007 -- in production)
Southland Tales (2006)
Man About Town (2006)
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
Taxi 3 (2003)
Storm Watch (2002)
Anna and the King (1999)
Wild Wild West (1999)
Red Corner (1997)
Nixon (1995)
The Crow (1994)

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