Bai Ling

Note: Bai Ling (白玲) is also the name of the leader of Radio Guangdong.

Template:ChineseText Template:Infobox Chinese-language singer and actor Template:Chinese name Bai Ling (simplified Chinese: 白灵; traditional Chinese: 白靈; pinyin: Bái Líng; born October 10, 1966) is a Chinese actress who has since claimed US citizenship.

Early life

Bai was born in Chengdu, People's Republic of China. Her father, Bai Yuxiang (白玉祥), was a musician in the People's Liberation Army, and later a music teacher. Her mother, Chen Binbin (陈彬彬), was a dancer, stage actress, and a literature teacher in Sichuan University; Bai's maternal grandfather was a military officer of the Kuomintang army, and thus was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. In the early 1980s, Bai Ling's parents divorced, and later remarried. Her mother remarried to the writer Xu Chi (徐迟), renowned for his report titled Goldbach's Conjecture, about Chinese mathematician Chen Jingrun. Bai Ling has one older sister Bai Jie (白洁), who works for the Chinese tax bureau, and a younger brother Bai Chen (白陈), who emigrated to Japan and works for an American company.

Bai has described herself as a very shy child who found that she best expressed herself through acting and performing. She has said that acting allows one to ignore how society tells one to behave and allows other parts within oneself to be expressed. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), she learned how to perform by participating in Eight model plays her elementary school shows. After her graduation from middle school, she was sent to do labor work at Shuangliu (双流), a suburb county of Chengdu, where the Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport is located.

Before long, she managed to pass the People's Liberation Army's exams, and became an "artist soldier" at Linzhi, Tibet. Her main activity there was entertaining in the musical theater. She also served shortly as an Army nurse. Three years later, she was discharged from the army.

Subsequently, Bai spent some time in a mental hospital. Though she insisted then and now, "I'm not crazy," she maintains to this day that she is from the moon, where her grandmother lives, "I'm not really in reality. I'm in my own universe and my mind is a million miles somewhere else," she claims, further explaining, "Why I feel like I come from the moon is because my mother told me I was found somewhere." She believes that when she looks up at the moon, she can often spot her grandmother there, still living in her childhood home.

Soon after her release from the hospital, Bai joined People's Art Theater of Chengdu, and became a professional actress. Her performance as a young man in the stage play Yueqin and Little Tiger drew the attention of movie director Teng Wenji (滕文骥), which gained her her first movie role in On The Beach (1985), as a village girl who becomes a factory worker and struggled against her father's will for her to marry her cousin.

In later years, she appeared in several movies. She temporarily moved to New York in 1991 to attend New York University's film department as a visiting scholar, but later obtained a special visa that allowed her to remain in the United States until she became a citizen in 1999.

Acting career

At a party in July 2007

Bai had previously appeared in several Chinese movies. In 1984, Bai 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 magazine'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 had exceeded a length of 36 in (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 of her posing nude for 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.

Later in 2005 Bai was a castmate of the VH1 program called But Can They Sing?. The show gave several non-singer celebrities an attempt at singing 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 risqué and raunchy get-ups and her performances of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" and The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated". Bai was eliminated just before the grand finale but was invited back on the final week for a special performance of Divinyls' "I Touch Myself".

She has appeared in the show Lost as part of Jack's flashbacks. Her character, Achara, has predictive powers, and is the artist of Jack's tattoo reading "He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us." Achara attests to predicting Jack's leadership role on the island.

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

Personal life

On February 14, 2008 Bai Ling was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport for shoplifting two magazines and a package of batteries. It was an "emotionally crazy" day, Bai explained to E! News. She was coping with the "huge problem of breaking up [before] Valentine's Day...wrong boyfriend." She also wrote on her blog after the incident: "Life happens to you either you liked it or not, sometimes I feel you have to be so brave to stand in front of the World, and just hope that people will have a tender heart toward you." On March 5, 2008 she pleaded guilty to the charge of disturbing the peace. She was then fined $200 (US$700 when totaling the fine and penalties) for the action at the airport.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1984	Hai tan	Lu Xiao Mei
1985	Lei sa Gu Su	Wang Lingjuan
1986	Yue Yue	Yue Yue
1987	Shan cun feng yue
1988	Hu guang	Jing Huan
1992	Pen Pals	Sharice
1993	Homicide: Life on the Street	Lin Chang	TV series, 1 episode
1994	The Crow	Myca
	Dead Funny	Norriko
1995	The Cosby Mysteries	Dr. Valerie Chong	TV series, 1 episode
	Dead Weekend	Amelia A	TV film
	Nixon	Chinese Interpreter
1997	Red Corner	Shen Yuelin
1998	Touched by an Angel	Jean Chang	TV series, 2 episodes
	Somewhere in the City	Lu Lu
1999	Wild Wild West	Miss East
	Anna and the King	Tuptim
2000	Angel	Jhiera	TV series, 1 episode
	Row Your Boat	Chun Hua
2001	The Lost Empire	Guan Yin	TV film
	Shaolin Soccer	Mui	Voice
	The Breed	Lucy Westenra
2002	Face	Kim
	Storm Watch	Skylar
	Point of Origin	Wanda Orr
2003	Taxi 3	Qiu
	The Extreme Team	RJ
	Paris	Linda/Shen Li
	Jake 2.0	Mei Ling	TV series, 1 episode
2004	My Baby's Daddy	XiXi
	The Beautiful Country	Ling
	She Hate Me	Oni
	Gaau Ji	Mei
	Sam gang yi	Mei
	Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow	Mysterious Woman
2005	Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith	Senator Bana Breemu
	Lords of Dogtown	Punky Photographer
	Entourage	Li Lei	TV series, 1 episode
	Nomad	Gaukhar	Voice
	Edmond	Peep Show Girl
2006	Man About Town	Barbi Ling
	Southland Tales	Serpentine
	Scarface: The World Is Yours	U-Gin Bar Manager	Video game, Voice
2007	Living & Dying	Nadia
	Lost	Achara	TV series, 1 episode
	The Unit	Princess	TV series, 1 episode
	Shanghai Baby	Coco
	The Gene Generation	Michelle
2008	The Hustle	Han
	Toxic	Lena
	Dim Sum Funeral	Deedee
2009	Crank: High Voltage	Ria
	Magic Man	Samantha	completed
	A Beautiful Life	Esther	completed
	The Gauntlet	Kim Lee
	The Bad Penny	Nok	post-production
	The Lazarus Papers	Kyo	post-production
	The Land of the Astronauts	Erika	pre-production
	Geraldine	Geraldine	in-production
	Cross	Sunshine	in-production
2010	Chain Letter	Jai Pham
	The Confidant	Black	post-production
	Love Ranch	Samantha	completed

In China

• At the Beach 海滩（1984）
• Suspended Sentence 缓期执行（1985）
• Tears in Suzhou 泪洒姑苏（1985）
• The Bloody Trace 血案疑踪（1986）
• Yueyue 月月（1986）
• On Their Own or College Student Stories 大学生轶事（1987）
• Arc Light 弧光（1988） as Jing Huan
• Hit Without Gun 无枪枪手（1988）
• The Illegal Gunman 非法持枪者（1989）

In Hong Kong

• Three... Extremes 三更 (2004) – as Mei
• Dumplings 餃子 (2004) – as Mei

References

• Original text from Famous Chinese Women, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

External links

• Template:Amg name
• Official Bai Ling
• "Bai Ling's official blog"
• Bai Ling Interview at The Bastardly (In Santa Monica, CA)
• Newport Beach Film Festival Interview: Bai Ling
• CNN interview with Bai Ling