Gong lee

Childhood and Youth

Gong Li, the fifth child in the family, was born in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province. Her father, Gong Lizze ( Chinese 巩力泽 ), was a professor of economics at Liaoning University and his mother, Zhao Ying ( Chinese 赵英 ), who was forty years old at the time of Gong Li’s birth, was a materials scientist at the same university. The girl grew up in Jinan , the center of Shandong province, where her family moved after her parents, who soon after the birth of her daughter got a job at Shandong University . As the mother of the actress recalled, the second daughter was an unplanned child and Gong Li's parents had the idea to terminate the pregnancy, but at the insistence of the older family members, they decided to leave the child ^[3] .

In early childhood, Gong Li showed singing abilities and acting skills: she exactly repeated the specifics of other people's conversation, such as gestures, facial expressions, even accent and timbre of voice ^[4] . Her favorite film was the painting “The Red Guards on Lake Honlu” and, as the actress's mother recalled, the girl often sang lines from a song to the film, just like other phrases from her favorite compositions. At that time, she was not yet four years old ^[5] . The manifestation of interest in art with little Gong Li was not a complete surprise for parents, since in their youth they also took part in singing and dancing competitions. However, Li Tse hoped that the youngest daughter, like the rest of the children, would study hard, go to university and follow in his footsteps, not at all hoping for her career in art. Zhao Ying in every possible way supported her daughter's interest in dancing and singing, becoming in fact the first guide to the world of art.

During training in elementary school, teachers noticed singing and acting talent in Gong Li and recommended her for speaking at a local radio station ^[6] . While studying in high school, she continued to actively perform with the school troupe. Remembering the school years, the actress later admitted: “I was never considered beautiful. True. In childhood I was always considered ugly: small eyes, a small mouth, and besides four sticking out teeth ... however, she sang songs pretty well. The woman I admired the most was Sun Meiling . She intended to turn beauty into her own way of life and the basic principle of existence, as well as to exercise powerful political leadership. To play it in the movies is my biggest dream, but I know that it is impossible, because I am not beautiful enough ” ^[7] .

After completing primary education in 1983, the girl tried to enter the Faculty of Arts of Shandong Pedagogical Institute and the Pedagogical Institute of Qufu, but was refused in both cases. The following year, Gong Li was also refused, this time from the Shandong Institute of Arts and the Institute of Arts of the People’s Liberation Army ( Chinese 解放军 艺术 学院 ) ^[8] . However, in 1985, she was lucky enough to meet director Yin Davei ( Chinese 尹 大为 ), who devoted his free time to preparing Gong Li for entrance exams. Over the years, the director will recall that at the first meeting, the girl discouraged him by answering the question why she wants to become an actress: “Everyone says that I look like Momoe Yamaguchi . Actually, I don’t think so. I am me. I am Gong Li. I want others to say: “I look like Gong Li” ” ^[9] . The girl’s dream came true a quarter of a century later when they began to compare two other internationally recognized Chinese actresses with her - Zhang Ziyi ^[10] and Yu Nan ^[11] .

In July of that year, the girl received an invitation from the prestigious Central Academy of Drama in Beijing , which she graduated in 1989. There, the aspiring actress met the director Zhang Yimou , whose collaboration will bring her world fame.

Alliance with Zhang Yimou

Gong Li played her first role as a student. She was cast for the main female role in the film of the young director Zhang Yimou " Red Khao Liang ." This picture served as the beginning for an extremely successful creative union of a young actress and a novice director, whose relationship soon went beyond the set.

In anticipation of the filming of “Red Gaolyan”, Zhang Yimou faced the problem of choosing an actress for the main role: while the other actors were already approved in the spring of 1987, the director wanted to use a young, unknown actor in the film, but could not find a suitable candidate for the role Nines - the main character of the film. In search of pretenders for the main role, assistant director Yang Fenglian ( Chinese 杨凤良 ) arrived at the Central Academy of Drama , where he conducted a casting among the students of the academy. Yang had already made his choice (on the director’s daughter Li Wenhua) and was ready to return home when one of the students, Li Tong ( Chinese 李彤 ), noticed that if Gong Li was present at the casting, she would be better than anyone another came up for this role. At that time, the future famous actress was filming her debut work in Guangzhou - the television show "The Case of the Summer Vacations" and for objective reasons could not take part in the casting. However, Yang Fenglyan did not ignore the remark, listened carefully to the student and asked for photos of the actress. When Gong Li returned from the trip, Yang again arrived at the Academy, this time with Zhang Yimou, and on the same day they approved Gong Li as the leading woman ^[12] .

Many years later, Zhang Yimou recalled the first meeting with Gong Li: “At first glance, she impressed me with a pretty and smart [girl] with an expressive look. At that moment, she was dressed in wide-brimmed clothes, the size of which, in my opinion, did not correspond to the way I represented the main character of “Red Gaolyan”. At the same time, I represented the main character as a strong emotional girl. Later, getting a little closer, I found that she possesses the character that the character exactly needs ” ^[12] .

The painting “Red Khao Liang” has received worldwide recognition, among others winning the best film at the Berlin International Film Festival . In China, the picture received two major film awards - “One Hundred Flowers” ​​and “Golden Rooster”. At this time, Gong Li, who has not yet completed her studies at the academy, is world famous: she is awarded with prizes, invited to ceremonies at international film festivals, and is called one of the most beautiful women in the world. In 1989, when the actress finally graduated from the university, she played a role in Ju Dou. The success of this picture was reinforced by the following work, “Light the Red Lantern,” directed by Zhang Yimou once again.

Gong Li's latest work with Zhang Yimou was картина Coming home in 2014. In 1996, the actress married a Singapore tobacco magnate. Since that time, she began acting in films by American directors and in the works of other Chinese directors, except for the collaboration with which she brought her worldwide fame.

Split and subsequent career

The first major role for another director was the main role in Chen Kaige 's film “ Farewell, My Concubine ” (1993). For the role in this film, in the same 1993 she received the New York Film Critics Circle Award. In 2006, Premiere magazine assigned Gong Lee 89th place in the list of best roles of all time for playing this role.

Having received unspoken political immunity thanks to her worldwide fame, Gong Li began to criticize censorship policies in China. Her films “Farewell, My Concubine” and “Qiu Ju sues” were originally banned in China for containing finely veiled criticisms of the Chinese government. Regarding the sexual content in Ju Dou, Chinese censorship found the film to have “a bad effect on the physical and spiritual health of young people.”

Despite her popularity, Gong Li has not starred in Hollywood for many years, largely due to her inability to speak English. She made her English debut in 2005, when she starred in the role of the beautiful but vengeful Hatsumomo in "Memoirs of a Geisha."

Her other English-language roles to date include roles in The Chinese Box (1997), Miami Police (2006) and Hannibal Rising (2007). In all three films, she taught her English cues phonetically .

In 2010, she starred in the thriller "Shanghai."

In an interview, Gong Li admitted that each time, choosing a new role, she searches for herself something new, different from previous images ^[13] . Despite this, throughout her career, the actress prefers to play exclusively dramatic roles, and with rare exceptions, comedic ones. The actress explained her preferences by the fact that “the drama is deeper, [it] touches human hearts more” ^[14] . The actress’s preference for images of a certain type is also noticeable in the fact that some of her roles, for example, the Empress in The Curse of the Golden Flower and Hatsumomo in The Memoirs of a Geisha , had an obvious internal similarity: “both women know what they want, but they are in social conditions that prevent them from expressing it directly. So they must find indirect ways to fight for what they want to achieve ” ^[13] .

Each role for Gong Li is preceded by a careful study of the character’s image: “I usually begin [preparation for execution], carefully reflecting on the image and its history. Thus, I can understand his deep psychology, deep motives, desires, needs, in a word, everything that every woman, every person has. ” Zhang Yimou at the beginning of her collaboration with Gong Li spoke of her work like this: “There are actresses who stubbornly master the script before shooting, are very focused, almost go beyond the ordinary personality, but as soon as it comes to shooting on the set, the result is absolutely mediocre. These actresses lost a divine spark. She [Gong Li] is not like that. She is also diligently preparing for work, but moreover, she relies on her intuition. I want to say, it refers to the type of actors who feel the character. It is these actors who really have a divine spark. ” The director also noted that Gong Li was not afraid to argue on the set and independently proposed certain corrections, relying on her intuition and vision of the character. As a smart actress who understands her characters, Gong Li and another well-known director with whom she had a chance to collaborate - Chen Kaigee , spoke of ^[15] .

Despite the fact that since 1995, Gong Li has played in more than a dozen films, the greatest fame was brought to her by the films directed by Zhang Yimou , in particular, Red Kholoyan , Ju Dou and Light the Red Lantern . Common to these three works was the image of the patriarchal order of China at the beginning of the 20th century and the fate of a simple Chinese woman against its background. In all three paintings, Gong Li plays the role of a young woman who is forcibly married to an unloved person, but who nevertheless does not agree with the position of a quiet and humble concubine, but rebels against traditions, parents, her husband and fights for her true love. As researchers Chris Berry and Mary Farquhar note, the protest against the patriarchal system as such for the Chinese cinema era of the policy of reform and openness was no longer any cardinal novelty: at the beginning of the XX century, the actress Ruan Lingyu played the roles of a fallen or widowed single mother (Three Modern Women (1933), Little Toys (1933), Goddess (1934)), the heroine of another Chinese actress, Xie Fang , resisted forced marriages or tried to flee from them. The difference between the characters, performed by Gong Li and her predecessors, was that the sexuality of the heroines Ruan Lingyu and Xie Fang was purely individual, it was presented as a contrast to the national patriotic outburst, the national struggle with the colonialists and local feudal lords. Heroes Gong Li, on the contrary, use their sexuality to express a nationwide protest. On the question of who this protest was against or what, the opinions of critics diverged, however: since some of them saw more allegories than realities in Zhang Yimou’s films, they interpreted the characters’ images quite freely, believing that the protest against feudalism cannot be interpreted literally, in metaphorical form, this could be expressed as a protest against the West, its new colonialism , and a protest against the Communist Party of China ^[16] .

The liberation of female sexuality, which critics credited with Gong Li, also received mixed interpretations. Some reviewers pointed out that the heroines of the young actress became the first in Chinese cinema, who acted not only as objects of sexual desire, but also as its subjects, and saw this as an absolutely positive side, evidence of the emancipation of China, its cultural modernization . Others, on the contrary, noted that Gong Lee is not just a figure of male sexual fantasy, but also a fantasy figure of a male director who, imitating Hollywood , practically sells the actress to the West ^[16] .

Gong Li had a long relationship with Zhang Yimou, so widely covered in the press that Gong Li was mistakenly called his wife ^[17] . In 1995, their romance ended in a scandal that put an end to creative collaboration. In 1996, rumors appeared that Gong Lee had married a tobacco mogul from Singapore. The actress denied them until the Singapore newspaper published a copy of their marriage certificate. ^[18] They got married in Hong Kong in November 1996, ^{[18] [19]} , and in 2008, Gong Li changed her Chinese citizenship to Singaporean. In June 2010, the couple announced a divorce.

• 何明敏. Gong Li hua zhuan = 巩俐 画 传. - 第 1 版. - 汕头 : 汕头 大学 出版社, 2006. - 251 p. - ISBN 7810369121 .
• 柏邦妮. 巩俐 // 不 实: 柏邦妮 明星 访谈 录. - 第 1 版. - 北京: 新世界 出版社, 2009. - P. 131-142. - 258 p. - ISBN 9787510401145 .