Like her character Tuptim in Anna and the King, Bai Ling ("White Spirit") is a blend of delicacy and defiance-a woman who expresses herself in poetic terms and always follows her heart. For Ling, a career in acting meant the opportunity to "free the different elements, different animals" inside her, and to overcome her severe shyness. Indeed, her film roles display a bold array of chameleon colors-from Miss East in Wild Wild West to the lawyer Shen Yuelin in the political drama Red Corner to the seductive dominatrix Myca in The Crow.
Not exposed to films as a child, Ling explained that the most important influence on her artistic life was her time in the Szechuan province countryside with her grandparents, who raised her. "In the countryside, we had all these animals: chickens, dogs, sheep, squirrels, geese, snakes. I could get in touch with my senses, with nature. My grandmother taught me to appreciate that. My grandfather, a scholar, taught me to memorize a lot of poems. As an artist I think that was so important. It was like a romantic melody in me while I was a child."
Having learned to sing and dance in school, Ling's big break came when the People's Liberation Army came to a nearby town to recruit young artists. At the age of 14, she joined the PLA as a soldier/performer and was sent to Tibet to perform Tibetan song and dance for the PLA's Tibetan troops. She was given both military and artistic training, and looks back on these years as the period in her life when she became an adult, independent.
Her training in the PLA is also what enabled her to pursue acting in Beijing once she returned from Tibet. In Beijing, Ling worked her way up from playing extras to getting a lead role. She was noticed onstage and cast in a movie, and her film career quickly took off, earning her roles in numerous major films and an invitation to the Moscow Film Festival. But this free spirit was not content.
"I thought I had done whatever I could in China, but the world was huge," said Ling. "Also at Tiananmen Square, I was there every day, and after that I was upset. At that stage in my country, you didn't know where to go. Everything was frozen at that point. As an actress, my stage was in China, and a lot of people said there was no way I could become an actor in America, but I had this curiosity, and then I got this invitation, so I said, Why not just go?"
At 21, with very little English under her belt, Ling came to the U.S. as a visiting scholar at New York University. She worked as a hostess in a hotel restaurant, and as a newscaster at a Chinese TV station, while taking English classes at night. The rigorous schedule even led her to give up the acting scholarship she had been given at Lee Strasberg, but not before she discovered that adapting to the American style of acting came quite easily for her-an artist who had always been keenly aware of her senses and surroundings.
"American actors know how to act naturally," she explained. "In China, we have a theatrical acting style-exaggerated, like opera. It's "art' art. But here, whatever is natural, that's the art. It was very easy for me to relate to that because the source of everything for me comes from nature, or comes from my heart, my feelings, my senses."
Ling's main challenge was the language. She recalled being told at a party about an audition at the Ensemble Theatre Company, where they were looking for an Asian woman to play a lead. "I said, "What is an audition?' I didn't know the word." Nevertheless, she auditioned and got the role. "When I was in the play, I only understood my lines and the person's lines who I was talking with. I used to stand onstage, blank, waiting for my cue. I couldn't understand."
After signing with an agent who had seen her in that role, she began auditioning for film roles, and was eventually offered the role of a lawyer opposite Richard Gere in Red Corner.
When discussing the political content of the film, these days Ling is far more circumspect than in earlier interviews, in which she defended the film's attempt to expose the brutality in the Chinese political system. After all, Red Corner did cost her her Chinese passport, and left her worried about her family and friends, without the possibility of returning.
"The film put me in a place I don't belong," she said. "I'm not a politician. I learned that you are responsible for what you talk about. There are consequences, the impact on other people-friends, relatives. All the Chinese newspapers were calling me a traitor. I was very sad, because I had no intention against my country. I am proud of my country. China is changing tremendously."
Ling was allowed to return several months ago, after a two-year absence, to spend time with her grandmother, an experience that reminded her of the joys of her previous life. "To us, there, my grandmother and I, watching the sky changing colors, that's a movie for us. Like with my character Tuptim, her world is like the world I am talking about."
Indeed, as a woman at the boundary between two cultures, Anna and the King is a film with a profound resonance for Bai Ling. "You've got three wonderful elements there. A king, who represents a royal system, Asian culture, empires from thousands of years ago, and values of politeness, respectfulness, saving face. But in Western culture, people value education, what you learn from your history, from books, which Anna represents-a teacher. And then my part-and the spirit of the children-represent nature, the real truth, what we are made of, what we come from."
In her preparation for the film, Bai Ling went about her work with her characteristic sensitivity. The most difficult part, she said, was shaving her head, because it signified a kind of goodbye to her former self-her long hair was somehow representative of a traditional Chinese standard of beauty. But her true work was inner work.
"I always do research from within. When I first read a script, I try to always leave my heart open and put myself in a peaceful state of mind, where all the elements inside of me are free, so when I read it, the character will make sounds to my heart or to my senses. If I don't respond, I know it's not truthful, or it's not right."
Her future plans? At the time of the interview, she explained that she is on page 210 of a novel she is writing about her life, and has a guest role in an upcoming episode of Angel called "She" (which airs in February) as Angel's nemesis, a "truck-driving, ass-kicking, fighting seductress." But for the most part, Bai Ling's future is somewhat of a mystery.
"I like surprises," she said. "My future is a gift, I'm looking forward to opening the package to see what's inside."
-Laura Weinert