Gong Li

Gong Li, the Meryl Streep of China, was plucked from college to become the muse for Zhang Yimou (To Live), one of her country’s reigning auteurs. Although she could have made her American debut with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in 1995’s Heat, she had to pass because of scheduling conflicts. “It was too bad,” she says, through a Mandarin-speaking translator. “That’s actually a great film.”

Ten years later, the role of Hatsumomo, the beguiling and venomous geisha who’s displaced by the younger Sayuri (Ziyi Zhang) in Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, would finally bring her to the States. “She’s like a flame or a fire,” Li says about her character, who throws icy glances and tables with equal acuity. The actress endured six weeks of intensive geisha training to prepare for the role, resulting in not only an understanding of her character’s unique cultural function but some killer fan tricks as well. “It was kind of like squeezing a lemon,” she says, crediting Marshall’s meticulous line-by-line rehearsals for extracting “every little last drop of juice out” of her performance.

Acting in English proved to be a tough challenge as well, with an interpreter and dialect coach on set for Li. Currently, she’s getting ready to show off her sharpened language skills in this summer’s Miami Vice with none other than Heat director Michael Mann. But Memoirs will always hold a special place in her heart and mind. “I have a great memory of the first time I made a film in America,” she says. “It’s very special to me.”—Stephen Saito