娱乐英语新闻:Gong Li: "I don't fear mistakes"

And the roles she deems right are complex. The star of Raise the Red Lantern and Miami Vice just hates flat characters. And the last thing she wants to do is repeat roles.

Her latest role is that of a spy in Shanghai whose cover is that she is a head gangster's wife. The story is set in 1941, when Japanese troops are invading China. Caught between love and her mission, her character is faced with difficult choices. An oriental take on Casablanca, Gong acts opposite John Cusack and Chow Yun-fat.

"This role is very new to me," Gong says. "(The character) is smart, mysterious and courageous. I have never played a patriot, someone who will die for her country."

As always, Gong discussed her role at length with the director, on this occasion, Mikael Hfstrm. She also turned to documentaries and photographs about World War II, besides taking dancing classes three times a week, to ensure an accurate portrayal of the character.

"I will not start acting if I am not fully prepared," she says. "It may sound old-fashioned, but that's the way I am."

The film, titled Shanghai, will premiere in China on June 17 and in the United States, three months later. The Sino-US co-production is Gong's fourth film with a Hollywood crew. She admits that in Memoirs of a Geisha, her first Hollywood film, she felt a bit out of place, but that is no longer the case.

"I do not feel like I am a foreigner. Shanghai is a story about China, so maybe they (the Hollywood crew) are the real foreigners," she jokes. "But seriously, one thing I like about Hollywood is that it has so many professional writers, so most of their scripts are very solid."

However, she points out, there are few good roles for Asian actors.

"It is unrealistic for Hollywood to offer many important roles to Asian actors; after all, we are not part of its culture," she says. "But I would still encourage young actors to meet different people and cultures. Do not focus too much on where you work, care more for the story, director and partners."

Gong's next Hollywood production is a film about Genghis Khan, in which she plays a Mongolian woman, opposite Mickey Rourke.

Gong says she never planned her overseas career. She attributes her popularity worldwide to China's better links with the outside world. But she is inarguably the most internationally acclaimed actress from China.

"I feel pretty proud about that," she says with obvious confidence. "It proves that my stubbornness has paid off. As an actor you have to be very confident and stick to your choices."

Picky as she is, Gong has also chosen some roles that she now regrets. With an impish smile, she calls her roles in several Hong Kong slapstick comedies in the early 1990s as "false steps".

"They just told me I would play twins -'both pretty girls', " she says imitating the Hong Kong dialect, and cannot not help laughing. "I thought it would be a challenge to play two roles in a film, so I went there, very happily. Later I found that even if you play eight roles in a film, if they are meaningless, it does not matter."

The film was God of Gamblers II: Back to Shanghai, shot in 1991. In it Gong plays two sisters who support Stephen Chow in the lead.

But it was in the same year that Gong also starred in Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern, which was nominated for best foreign language film at the Academy Awards.

Gong is quite open talking about Zhang, and her time as his most important muse and lover. It was their films such as Red Sorghum, Ju Dou and Story of Qiuju, that brought modern Chinese cinema to the world's notice.

Off screen the two fell in love while Zhang was still married, but their much-talked about relationship ended in 1995, after their seventh collaboration as director and lead actress.

The two did not join hands again until 2006 when Zhang fulfilled an old promise to make Gong a queen on screen in the Curse of the Golden Flower.