Long the muse of leading Chinese "Fifth Generation" filmmaker Zhang Yimou, Gong Li began her film career when she met the director while in drama school. She and Zhang received considerable international acclaim with their debut, "Red Sorghum" (1987), in which Gong played a meek bride who becomes a powerful woman when she takes over her husband's winery after his death. One of China's leading young stars of the 1980s and 90s, Gong has appeared in films by other directors ("The Empress Dowager" 1988, directed by Li Hanxiang; "The Terra Cotta Warrior", in which she acted opposite Zhang) but it is in Zhang's films that she is best known internationally....
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