Bai Ling played Achara in "Stranger in a Strange Land". Born in Chengdu, China, Bai's father was a music teacher and mother was a dancer. Her parents soon went away for the Cultural Revolution, causing Bai to live with her grandmother at a young age. She claims she was a quiet child who expressed herself through theater.
She performed theater for the People's Liberation Army at the age of fourteen and kept doing it for three years. She took part in many government protests and moved to New York in 1991 as a visiting scholar. She then obtained a special visa, and finally became a United States citizen in 1999. Her first English role was as a villain in The Crow. She then played a Chinese interpreter in Nixon. For her role in Anna and the King she cut her long hair short, and it appears to be still short today.
Trivia[]
- She was named one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People in the World in 1998.
- She appeared in, and on the cover of Playboy's June 2005 issue.
- She was to appear in Star Wars:Episode III as a character called Senator Bana Breemu but her scenes were cut. Ling claimed it was because she posed for Playboy, but George Lucas said that her lines were unimportant and cut months before they learned about her posing for Playboy.[1]
See also[]
External linksOf[]
- Official site
- San Francisco Chronicle Tubular blog - "Lost's Marked Man" includes a critique of Ling's appearance in "Stranger in a Strange Land"