Bai Ling Biography

Bai Ling.}} (, born October 10, 1966) is a Chinese-born American actress known for her work in films such as The Crow, Red Corner and Wild Wild West, and in TV series such as Entourage and Lost. In 2011 she appeared in the fifth season of the VH1 reality television series Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, which documented her recovery from alcohol addiction. She speaks both English and Mandarin fluently.

Early life

Bai was born in Chengdu, People's Republic of China in 1966. Her father, Bai Yuxiang (?"??), was a musician in the People's Liberation Army, and later a music teacher. Her mother, Chen Binbin (???), 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 (??), renowned for his report titled Goldbach's Conjecture, about Chinese mathematician Chen Jingrun. Bai Ling has one older sister Bai Jie (??), who works for the Chinese tax bureau, and a younger brother Bai Chen (??), 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. During the Cultural Revolution (1966"1976), she learned how to perform by participating in Eight model plays, at her elementary school shows. After her graduation from middle school, Bai was sent to do labor work at Shuangliu (??), a county near Chengdu, where the Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport is located.

She soon passed the People's Liberation Army's exams, and became an "artist soldier" in Nyingchi Prefecture, Tibet, where she served from age 14 to 17. Her main activity there was entertaining in the musical theater. She also served briefly as an Army nurse. Ling later stated that during her time in Tibet she, along with other female performers, was regularly plied with alcohol and sexually abused by older male Chinese officers, including one instance of rape that led to a pregnancy, which she was forced to terminate with an abortion. She cites this period of sexual abuse for her subsequent struggles with alcohol addiction. Subsequently, Bai spent some time in a mental hospital.

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 ("?-"??), 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

Bai had previously appeared in several Chinese movies. In 1984, Bai appeared as a fishing village girl in the movie On the Beach (??). Later she filmed several other movies, including Suspended Sentence ("?"??), Yueyue (??), Tears in Suzhou (?"?"?"?) without much attention. She became famous after playing a girl with a psychological disorder who has an affair with her doctor, in the film The Shining Arc (?"?"?) directed by Zhang Junzhao (?"?"?"?). 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. The Shining Arc 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'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 was longer than 36 inches (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 she posed nude in 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.

In 2004, Bai starred in independent filmmaker Fruit Chan's Dumplings and the performance earned her the Hong Kong Film Award for Best Supporting Actress. In the same year she has been critically accaimed for her performance in another independent movie, The Beautiful Country, with Nick Nolte, by Hans Petter Moland.

Later in 2005, Bai was a cast member on the VH1 program called But Can They Sing?. The show gave several non-singer celebrities an opportunity to sing 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 raunchy outfits and her performances of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" and The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated". She was eliminated just before the grand finale but was invited back in the final week for a special performance of Divinyls' "I Touch Myself".

In 2007, she starred as Coco in the film adaptation of the controversial Chinese contemporary novel, Shanghai Baby, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival, and she appeared in one episode ("Stranger in a Strange Land") of the show Lost.

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

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 whether you like 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 towards you." On March 5, 2008 she pleaded guilty to the charge of disturbing the peace. She was fined $200 (US$700 including the fine and penalties).

In a 2009 interview, Bai claimed 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 stated, 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.

Regarding her public image and troubles over the years, she stated:

Bai is bisexual.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1984	Hai tan	Lu Xiao Mei ("???)	??, lit. "The Beach"
1985	Tears in Suzhou	Wang Lingjuan ("???)	?"?"?"?; pinyin: Lei sa gu su
1985	Suspended Sentence	Yang Lei (?"?)	"?"??
1986	Yue Yue	Yue Yue (??)	??
1986	The Bloody Trace		??-"??
1987	On their Own aka. College Student Stories	Xiao Qian (?"?)	??"??"?; Da xue sheng yi shi
1987	Shan cun feng yue	("?"?)	?"???; lit. "Wind and Moon of Mountain Village"
1988	Arc Light	Jing Huan (?"?)	?"?"?; Hu guang
1988	Hit Without Gun		"???"?"?
1989	The Illegal Gunman		?"???"?
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 Monkey King (TV miniseries)	Guanyin	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
	Dumplings (??; Jiao zi)	Mei	Best Supporting Actress at the 24th HKFA
	Three... Extremes ("?"?2; Sam gang yi)	Mei	Segment Dumplings
	Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow	Mysterious Woman
2005	Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith	Senator Bana Breemu	deleted scenes
	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 ("Stranger in a Strange Land")
	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
	A Beautiful Life	Esther
	The Gauntlet	Kim Lee
	The Bad Penny	Nok
	The Lazarus Papers	Kyo
	The Land of the Astronauts	Erika
	Geraldine	Geraldine
	Cross	Sunshine
2010	Chain Letter	Jai Pham
	The Confidant	Black
	Love Ranch	Samantha
	Locked Down	Flores
2011	Celebrity Rehab	Herself
2012	Hawaii Five-0	Madame Esmeralda	TV series, 1 episode ("Popilikia / Misfortune")
2013	Killer's Creed	Michelle