On May 20, Ziyi attended the Inglourious Basterds premiere held at the Palais Des Festivals during the 2009 Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France. She looked really classy!

On May 15, Zhang Ziyi made a brief visit to dozens of orphaned children and teenagers in Deyang, Sichuan Province. Zhang, who is an ambassador for the charity organization Care for Children, was warmly received by the kids there who called her “Ziyi sister”. After presenting gifts to the youngsters, Zhang Ziyi spent some time chatting with them. “These children need to know that they are loved and are not alone,” said the actress. “Only then will they not feel afraid of society or difficulties in life.” Soon after the trip, Zhang Ziyi will fly to Cannes, France, where she will be a judge in the short film section of the ongoing Cannes International Film Festival

Improvements have been observed in the English standard of Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi since she started dating Israeli boyfriend Vivi Nevo. However, an entire page of English script brings her nightmares. The Horsemen, which will be opening in Hong Kong cinemas soon, is Zhang’s third Hollywood film after Rush Hour 2 and Memoirs Of A Geisha. As opposed to the previous two films in which she acted as Chinese ladies adopted by American families and was not required to speak lengthy English, it is a great challenge for her this time round. She said, “After all, English is not my mother tongue and I had many lines in this film. I had nightmares almost every night when I practiced with my teacher daily for three months. I suffered from psychasthenia (a psychological disorder characterized by fear, obsession, compulsions and anxiety).” The Horsemen was shot in Winnipeg, Canada, during the coldest time of the year in the country when temperature was at -35 degrees Celsius. “It felt like working in a freezer. We had to wear several layers of clothes to keep warm. In the scene where Dennis Quaid (the male lead) was chatting with me in the park, we were so cold that we couldn’t even speak our lines properly. It was also hard to have any facial expressions. When I cried, the teardrops immediately froze to become ice.”

THE recent spate of criticisms aimed at Zhang Ziyi’s role in upcoming Hollywood thriller, The Horsemen, might lead to the film being banned in China. The Chinese actress came under fire recently from Chinese netizens who spoke out about her portrayal of an alleged serial killer who, according to Oriental Daily, was reportedly “ravaged” by a Caucasian male in one scene and kneels before American actor Dennis Quaid in another. After watching these scenes, netizens claim that the roles were demeaning and called for the movie to be banned in China. Conversely, fans of Ziyi defended her and said that she was doing the country proud by accepting roles in Hollywood. They also said that she was merely playing the part as an actor. This is not the first time the 30-year-old actress has been labelled as a “traitor”. Read the rest of this entry »

Mexican actress Salma Hayek and her husband, French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault, tied the knot for the second time on April 25, in a star-studded ceremony in Venice, Italy, media reports. Hayek married French businessman Francois-Henri Pinault at the City Hall in Paris on February 14 this year in a low-key service. Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi and her prospective husband Vivi Nevo were in attendance, along with other celebrity friends of the couple, including Penélope Cruz, Edward Norton, Woody Harrelson, Olivier Martinez and former French President Jacques Chirac. The wedding was a black tie affair. Zhang Ziyi and Neno were spotted hand-in-hand wearing black as they arrived for the nuptials.