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Zhang Ziyi: Roles
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Zhang Ziyi plays a raccoon spirit princess in this musical love-story by Japanese director Seijun Suzuki. Her character, Tanuki-hime, falls in love with Amechiyo (Joe Odagiri), a prince who has been banished from his father’s castle. The sets of the film will resemble those of a play on stage. For her role, Ziyi took two weeks of singing and dancing lessons in Japan. While her speaking part is in Chinese, she will sing in both Chinese and Japanese. It will be premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, then released in Japan on May 28th, and shown in the US at the New York Asian Film Festival June17-30.
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Zhang Ziyi's upcoming schedule includes a number of Asian-produced feature films that will surely make their way to the states with her current success as an imported starlet and her first English-speaking role as a mainstream Hollywood actress. Ziyi is curently set star as a mail-order bride in the comedy "Good Cook, Likes Music," a film that was supposed to star Adam Sandler until the busy actor signed on to the unusually similar "Spanglish."
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Zhang Ziyi was attending the Beijing Dance Academy by the age 11. Four years later, she was accepted to the Central Academy of Drama - often viewed as the best acting college in China. When she was 19, Zhang Ziyi was offered a role in the renowned director, Zhang Yimou's, The Road Home - winning the Silver Bear Award at the 2000 Berlin Film Festival.
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Despite the very small role, Zhang Ziyi's performing skills improved a lot, which was very significant for her. As she said, she found one day, to her surprise, she had learned how to control a role.
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At 15, Zhang opted to become an actress instead and enrolled in Beijing's acclaimed Central Drama Academy. Four years later, she auditioned for a shampoo commercial by China's renowned director Zhang Yimou, who used the advertisement as a way to screen actresses for his upcoming film, The Road Home. The veteran director cast her for the lead, the role of a young, rural schoolgirl in love with a schoolteacher.
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In August 2004, the American Columbia Broadcasting Corporation announced Zhang Ziyi would play the leading role of Sayuri in the film Memoirs of a Geisha , which was to be supervised by Spielberg Steven and directed by Rob Marshall. Adapted from a novel of the same name, the film portrays the life experience of a Japanese geisha (a hostess trained to entertain men with song and dance), including her struggles and pains.
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