Movies of War

Mar 15, 2026 4:47pm PT Zhang Ziyi on ‘Crouching Tiger,’ ‘The Grandmaster’ and Twenty Years of Making Impossible Roles at Asian Film Awards Masterclass By Naman Ramachandran Plus Icon Naman Ramachandran Latest ‘Mam’ Director Nan Feix and Chef Jerald Head on the San Sebastián-Winning Film Born From Their NYC Vietnamese Restaurant; Clip Unveiled Ahead of SXSW (EXCLUSIVE) 3 days ago Ranveer Singh’s ‘Dhurandhar’ Returns to Cinemas Worldwide Ahead of Sequel Release 4 days ago Netflix’s Eyeline Studios Opens Hyderabad Facility in Major Long-Term India Investment 4 days ago See All Getty Images Zhang Ziyi has spent two decades crying in her sleep, freezing on location and spending years training in martial arts forms most people have never heard of – and she would not have it any other way. The actor traced the arc of her screen career at a masterclass held Sunday at the Xiqu Centre, West Kowloon, part of the programming surrounding the 19th Asian Film Awards in Hong Kong. The conversation ranged across her most defining roles, her approach to physical and emotional preparation, and her convictions about Asian cinema’s place in the world. The session came just before Zhang received the Excellence in Asian Cinema Award at the evening’s ceremony. Related Stories Mariah Carey on Her Third Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Nomination, Unreleased Grunge Album and Plans for the 25th Anniversary of 'Glitter' Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's 17 Nominees for 2026 Include Shakira, Lauryn Hill, Pink, Jeff Buckley, Phil Collins, New Edition and Wu-Tang Clan Zhang was 19 when she made “The Road Home,” a second-year student at the Central Academy of Drama who had graduated from dance school two years earlier. Facing a camera for the first time, she recalled feeling equal parts raw nerves and instinct, armed with the foundational acting principle her school had drilled into her: to truly listen, truly watch, truly feel. Director Zhang Yimou sent his cast to the countryside to live among the people they would portray, an immersive experience she credits with establishing her bedrock habit of observing and inhabiting life. “The performance relied on instinct,” she said. “At that point there was no real technique to speak of – what the role needed was a kind of purity and sincerity.” Popular on Variety From there the conversation moved to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” and the physical ordeal of working with Ang Lee. Zhang said her dance training was what allowed her to survive the demands of the production, combined with what she described as a relentless, grinding determination to meet the director’s vision for the character. The pressure manifested in a recurring phenomenon – crying in her sleep – that she said has returned at other extreme moments in her life. Her understanding of her character, she noted, has deepened considerably over time. At the time of filming she saw her as little more than a rebellious, disobedient girl. Now she recognizes something more complex within her – a fiercely suppressed inner wildness born of ritual propriety, family expectation and the constraints of the jianghu world. “Jasmine Women” presented a different order of challenge: three roles across three generations of the same bloodline, each woman shaped by her era yet connected by a shared obsessive devotion to love. The director was Hou Yong, who had been the cinematographer on “The Road Home,” and Zhang said her trust in him was immediate and total. She described mapping each character through posture, gait and eye quality – the first generation a light-footed, wide-eyed girl from a prosperous family who dreams of becoming a movie star; the second emotionally armored and combative, shaped by an unloving mother and a turbulent marriage; the third assured and direct, her movements unhurried and relaxed. The film’s birth scene, which took three rain-soaked nights to shoot, required total physical and emotional immersion. With no peers who had yet given birth, she drew on conversations with older women, including her own mother, about what it truly felt like to bring a child into the world. “There was no room for any technique,” she said. “You had to feel the pain. You had to feel all of it.” She added, with laughter, that looking back at the scene she suspects the prosthetic pregnancy belly may have been somewhat oversized. In “Love for Life,” Zhang starred opposite Aaron Kwok under the direction of Gu Changwei – a cinematographer-turned-director whose instinct, she said, is to strip away artifice and capture actors in their most unguarded states. The film centers on HIV-positive villagers cast out by their community. In one scene in which her character and Kwok’s hold up a marriage certificate and attempt to share the news with neighbors who recoil from their touch, Zhang said she found herself repeating words from the marriage certificate over and over in her emotional state – not as a design but as an involuntary expression of what the official recognition of their marriage meant to a woman whose life had been defined by rejection. “After we shot that scene I could only stand to the side and weep,” she said. “The heartbreak was for how little was enough for them – and how much it still meant.” She recalled Kwok arriving on set as a glamorous Hong Kong star and transforming himself completely into a grounded village man, and described watching him in character as a daily confirmation that the director’s casting instinct had been precisely right. The longest stretch of the conversation was devoted to “The Grandmaster” and the three years she spent working with Wong Kar-wai. Training in martial art Ba Gua Zhang under three instructors, she described the practice as going far beyond the choreography of the film – it reshaped her from the inside out. One foundational exercise involved walking what is called the Tang Mi Bu, a mode of movement demanding that the practitioner hold complete stillness in the lower body while carrying full internal pressure, as though moving through mud without disturbing the surface. “Fifty minutes,” she said of the drill, still apparently vivid in memory. The discipline and containment demanded by the practice, she said, gradually burned away a restlessness within her and brought her to an understanding of her character’s absolute commitment and refusal to compromise. “Ba Gua Zhang let me touch the marrow of the character,” she said. She spoke about Peter Chan Ho-sun’s “She’s Got No Name,” in which she plays a woman who carries a birthmark on her face, her hair grown long on one side to conceal it. Zhang said she suggested the detail to the director as a way of grounding the character’s psychology in something physical – a wound that had shaped her sense of self since childhood. The character’s opening scene, shot in the damp cold of a Shanghai November, finds her hiding and exhausted after an act of violence, her body trembling. Zhang arrived early on set, changed into costume and crouched in position while the crew lit the scene, willing herself to get cold. “A sensation imagined at home and a sensation arrived at on a real location in costume are entirely different things,” she said. Closing the session with an audience question about how Asian cinema and Asian actors can gain genuine international footing rather than simply being reduced to symbols, Zhang was direct. The East, she said, is not the periphery but an endlessly rich foundation. “Actors are not symbols – we are bridges,” she said. The ambition to reach a global stage has never been about accommodation or imitation but about making the world see the power of Asian stories and the spirit of Asian women. “Our cultural depth is the unique path to the international,” she said. “This generation of Asian filmmakers needs to face the world with stubbornness and with backbone – to hold to our own roots. True international strength has never come from worshipping someone else’s culture.” Jump to Comments Angelina Jolie and Dr. Denis Mukwege on the Message Behind Biopic ‘Muganga, the One Who Treats’: ‘Men Can Be Part of the Solution to Fight Sexual Violence’ (EXCLUSIVE) Džana Pinjo, Snežana Bogićević, Maja Izetbegović to Star in ‘Hedgehogs in the Haze,’ From Oscar Winner Danis Tanović (EXCLUSIVE) JavaScript is required to load the comments. Loading comments...