Faye Wong was born in Beijing in 1969. She launched an extremely successful singing career in the early 1990s, with numerous hit singles and albums earning her the nickname "the diva of Asia." She made her film debut in 1995 in Hou Hsiao-hsien's Good Men, Good Women, and the same year Wong Kar-wai cast her in Chungking Express — a role that brought her international attention and won her a Best Actress award in Sweden.
She went on to appear in several Chinese television series, and in 2002 starred in Jeff Lau's comedy A Chinese Odyssey, produced by Wong Kar-wai. 2046 marked her third collaboration with the director — and perhaps the start of a new phase in her acting career. In 2004 she took a lead role in Wilson Yip's Leaving Me, Loving You, and around that time was also working on the adventure comedy Jiu Mei Hu, directed by Arthur Wong.
