Gong Li was born in 1965 in Liaoning province and studied acting at Beijing's Central Academy of Drama. Her very first leading role, in Zhang Yimou's internationally acclaimed Red Sorghum, made her a star — the film won the Golden Bear at the 1987 Berlinale. She went on to make a series of films with her then-husband and director Zhang Yimou that were also highly successful in the West, showcasing her remarkable range.
She appeared in Ju Dou (1990), and in 1992 played the proud wife of a feudal-era patriarch in Raise the Red Lantern. Her performance as the title character in Zhang Yimou's The Story of Qiu Ju won her the Best Actress award in Venice in 1992. The following year she starred for the first time under director Chen Kaige in Farewell My Concubine. Shanghai Triad, a film set in 1930s Shanghai, marked her final collaboration with Zhang Yimou in 1995.
Since then, splitting her time between Hong Kong, Singapore and Beijing, she has appeared in Chen Kaige's Temptress Moon and The Emperor and the Assassin, as well as — alongside Jeremy Irons and Maggie Cheung — in Wayne Wang's Chinese Box, about the handover of Hong Kong to China. In 2002 she appeared in Zhou Yu's Train opposite Tony Leung Ka-fai. She also featured in Wong Kar-wai's segment of the anthology film Eros, playing a prostitute, and around this time was filming Rob Marshall's adaptation of Memoirs of a Geisha, produced by Steven Spielberg.
