Zhou Xun is an internationally acclaimed Chinese actress and singer. She is regarded as one of the four most promising young film actresses in China (四小花旦) in the early 2000s, along with Zhang Ziyi, Xu Jinglei and Zhao Wei.
Zhou was born to a middle class family. Her father, Zhou Tianning (周天宇), was a local movie projectionist and her mother, Chen Yiqin (陈以琴), a salesperson at a department store.
Zhou Xun later enrolled at the Zhejiang Arts Institute (浙江省藝術學校), a decision which her parents initially objected as they wanted her to graduate from a university. Nonetheless, Zhou fought to further her interest in the dramatic arts and was accepted.
While she was in her teens and schooling, she was handpicked for a role in a movie Strange Tales amongst Old and desolute Tombs《古墓荒斋》.
Zhou had a difficult route to stardom, having to eke a living on early cameos and minor parts. She finally caught international attention through her roles in Lou Ye's Suzhou River in 2000 and Dai Sijie's film adaptation of the book of same name Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress in 2002.
In 2002, she starred in the television remake of Jinyong's wuxia novel The Legend of the Condor Heroes (射鵰英雄傳) as "Huang Rong" with actor Li Yapeng as her male lead. The series was one of the most watched in mainland China in 2003.
Zhou then successfully entered the Hong Kong film market in Peter Chan's musical film Perhaps Love in 2005. This role won her the "Best Actress" award in the Hong Kong Film Awards.
Aside from acting, she has also released solo albums in 2003 titled Summer (夏天) and in 2005 Come Across (偶遇), and sang for soundtracks for the motion picture Baober In Love, Xin Bian Guo Le Xi San Meng You Xian Jing, and Perhaps Love.
After Perhaps Love, her next wuxia project was Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet, in which she played a supporting role. Her singing was also featured in the movie and on the soundtrack
Taking on two roles in the Susie Au Shuet-Yi directed Ming Ming, Zhou first played the role of Ming Ming who is in love with D and stole things for him and then she played Na Na who has also fallen in love with D. The film is also known by the name Na Na On The Run and was released in 2007. The film won high praise at the 11th Pusan International Film Festival held in South Korea in the month of October, 2006. On the day of the film release, she also released her new music video, the song of which is the theme song of her film Ming Ming.
Zhou will be playing the part of a taxi driver on the lookout for her missing boyfriend, in the Beijing Film Academy professor Cao Baoping directed urban romance movie, The Equation of Love and Death. This movie was shot in the southern Yunnan province of China , and opens in August of 2008.
