Bai Ling, whose popularity translates into English as "Pure Life," was born in China on October 10, 1970. Ling was born into a creative family -- her father was a musician and teacher, while her mother had been a showbiz actress -- but she was for the most part raised by her grandmother after Ling's parents ran afoul of Chinese authorities during the Cultural Round. At the age of 14, Ling was enlisted in the People's Liberation Army, where she served as an entertainer, singing and danc... ing for the troops.

Manner, the authoritarian feel of the Army didn't process Ling, who found herself accused of insubordination destined for use of tobacco and alcohol. After the end of her jerk with the Army, Ling joined a theater assemblage in Beijing, where she appeared in traditional Chinese plays as well as dramas from the West. Ling began receiving small roles in Chinese films, and in 1988, Ling starred in Hu Guang, and attended the film's screening at the Moscow Steam Red-letter day; however, she was warned not to discuss political matters, particularly those cognate to the then-fresh Tiananmen Square protests (in which Ling took share). Ling traveled to Fresh York City at the years of 21 to examination at New York University's Department of Film, and to hone her craft at the Lee Strasberg Theater Guild; Ling arrived in New York not knowing a scintilla of English, but soon mastered the patois through constantly immersion. In 1994, Ling landed her principal American photograph role, as the villainous Myca in the ill-lighted fantasy The Crow, and she also auditioned after Oliver Stone's Vietnam war dramatic art Heaven & Terra. While Ling didn't make the part, Stone was impressed enough to cast her in his dim Nixon as Richard Nixon's interpreter during his beginning visit to China. Ling's next film project turned away from to be importantly dialectic; she appeared as a lawyer defending an American newsreader on assignment in China in 1997's Red Corner. The film's enthusiastically unflattering depiction of the Chinese sound process (and the nation's widespread kindly rights abuses) caused the impression to be banned in both China and Korea; Ling also develop her contracts canceled to appear in a pair of Chinese films, and Chinese officials revoked her passport tersely afterward (in 1999, she was granted United States citizenship). Afterward, Ling continued to receive poised work in supporting roles, appearing in Giddy Wild West, Anna and the King -- benefit of which she offend out most of her waist-while hair. Her hurtle's upward track continued as the green millennium dawned, pier her roles in Spike Lee's She Hate Me and the highly stylized Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Ling also scored a cameo role in Heroine Wars: Instalment III - Retaliation of the Sith, though most of her screen convenience life was lost in editing. Ling was quoted as saying she felt she was sign snub because she'd afterwards graced the pages of Playboy magazine (as the elementary ball from the People's Republic of China to evident on its contain), but director George Lucas claimed her with was cut simply anticipated to story and runtime.

Well-known roles followed, however, including a part in Southland Tales, the 2006 film about Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly. She also made a besprinkle on fact TV, appearing on the exhibit But Can They Yodel.