Bai was born in Chengdu, China; "Bai", her surname, literally means "white". Ling, a common Chinese given name, means clever. Her father, Bai Yuxiang, was a musician in the People's Liberation Army, and later a music teacher. Her mother, Chen Binbin, was a dancer, stage actress, and a literature teacher in Sichuan University; Bai's maternal grandfather was a military officer of Kuomintang's army, and thus was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. In early 1980s, Bai Ling's parents divorced, and both got remarried later. Her mother was remarried to the writer Xu Chi, who got his national reputation by his report titled Goldbach's Conjecture, about Chinese mathematician Chen Jingrun. Bai Ling has one elder sister Bai Jie, who works for a tax bureau in China, and a younger brother Bai Chen, who emigrated to Japan and works for an American company.
Bai has described herself as a very shy child who found that she best expressed herself through acting and performing. She has since said that acting allows one to ignore how society tells one to behave and allows other parts within oneself to be expressed. During the Cultural Revolution (1966 - 1976), she learned how to perform by participating in Eight model plays shows in her elementary school. After her graduation of middle school, she was sent to do labor work at Shuangliu, a suburb county of Chengdu, where the Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport is located.
Before long, she managed to pass the People's Liberation Army's exams, and became an "artist soldier" at Linzhi, Tibet. Her main activity there was to entertain with musical theater. She also served as a nurse for a while in the army. Three years later, she was discharged from the army, and joined People's Art Theater of Chengdu, and became a professional actress. Her performance in a stage play Yueqin and Little Tiger as a young man drew attention of movie director Teng Wenji, and gained her her first movie role in On The Beach 1985), as a village girl who becomes a factory worker and fights against her father's will for her to marry her cousin.
In later years, she appeared in several movies. She temporarily moved to New York in 1991 to attend New York University's film department as a visiting scholar, but later obtained a special visa that allowed her to remain in the United States until she became a citizen in 1999.
Bai had previously appeared in several Chinese movies when she was in China. In 1984, Bai appeared as a fishing village girl in the movie On the Beach. Later she filmed several other movies, including Suspended Sentence , Yueyue Tears in Suzhou without much attention. Her role as a girl with psychological disorder who had affair with her doctor gained her fame, in the movie Arc Light directed by director Zhang Junzhao . She attended Moscow Movie Festival in 1989 due to this role. When she was in China, her photographs had been used in magazines and calendars frequently, mostly with her whole shoulder and upper breasts exposed, which was not common in China at that time. Since coming to the United States in 1991, she has appeared in a number of American movies.
She began in the cult movie The Crow (1994), playing the half-sister/lover of the main villain, Top Dollar. Hu guang was her most celebrated role in the Chinese film industry, and Red Corner (1997) would be considered her break-out role in English film. She was named one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" in 1998. She appeared in Chris Isaak's music video "Please" in 1998. She shaved off her hair, which had exceeded a length of 36 in. (91.44 cm.) for her role in Anna and the King, and is widely known in Thailand as "Tubtim", her character's name from the film, even though the movie is officially banned because of its depiction of the King of Siam. She filmed scenes for Star Wars: Episode III (2005) as Senator Bana Breemu, but her role was cut during editing. She claimed that this was because of her posing nude for the June 2005 issue of Playboy magazine, whose appearance on newsstands coincided with the movie's May 2005 release, but director George Lucas denied this, stating that the cut had been made more than a year earlier. Her scenes were included in the "deleted scenes" feature of the DVD release.
Later in 2005 Bai was a castmate of the VH1 program called But Can They Sing?. The show gave several non-singer celebrities an attempt at singing on every episode and then allowed the audience and home viewers to vote off one contestant each week. Bai Ling was most famous for her risqué and raunchy get-ups and her performances of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" and The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated". Bai was eliminated just before the grand finale but was invited back on the final week for a special performance of Divinyls' "I Touch Myself".
She has most recently appeared in the show Lost as part of Jack's flashbacks. Her character is Achara, who many believe to be associated with the Dharma Initiative. She has predictive powers, and is the artist of Jack's tattoo reading "He walks amongst us, but he is not one of us." Achara attests to predicting Jack's leadership role on the island. She is expected to be on for three episodes.
In interviews with the New York Daily News and FHM, Bai has said she is bisexual.. Bai Ling is currently dating Philadelphia businessman and scientist Scott DeGirolamo. Bai lived in Singapore for the summer of 2006 and frequently patronised a now-defunct gay dance club called Happy (now renamed "Play"). She was apparently performing research for her upcoming film, an undisclosed film about the sex trade.
She is friends with Kimberly Stewart. She dated a play actor in the mid-1980s in China, and music composer Qu Xiao-Song in the mid 1990s, and Chris Isaak 1999-2001. She was briefly said to be romantically linked to Backstreet Boy Nick Carter. Rumors spread that Bai was engaged to him, but Carter denied the rumors, saying they were "just friends". More recently, Ling has been linked to Dionne Warwick's son, Damon Elliott, though the two are not currently dating.
She incorrectly predicted that Donald Trump would get his hair shaved after the "Battle of the Billionaires" at World Wrestling Entertainment's WrestleMania 23, saying "It will be nice to see him bald".
Filmography
In USA
* The Crow (1994) as Myca
* Dead Funny (1995) as Norico
* Dead Weekend (1995)
* Nixon (1995)
* Red Corner (1997)
* Somewhere in the City (1998)
* Wild Wild West (1999)
* Anna and the King (1999) (directed by Andy Tennant)
* Angel (episode: "She") (2000)
* Row Your Boat (2000)
* The Breed (2001)
* Shaolin Soccer (2001) (Voice only, American version)
* The Monkey King (2001)
* Face (2002)
* Point of Origin (2002)
* Storm Watch (2002)
* Paris (2003)
* Taxi 3 (2003)
* The Extreme Team (2003)
* 2003 MTV Movie Awards (2003)
* Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
* She Hate Me (2004) (directed by Spike Lee)
* My Baby's Daddy (2004)
* The Beautiful Country (2004) (written by Sabina Murray)
* Entourage (2005) ("Chinatown" episode as martial arts trainer, Li Lei)
* Edmond (2005)
* But Can They Sing? (2005)
* Lords of Dogtown (2005)
* Star Wars: Episode III (2005) (scene deleted)
* The Gene Generation (2006)
* Man About Town (2006)
* Southland Tales (2006)
* After Sex (2006)
* Living & Dying (2006)
* Lost (2007)
* The Unit (2007)
In China
* At the Beach 海滩（1984）
* Suspended Sentence 缓期执行（1985）
* Tears in Suzhou 泪洒姑苏（1985）
* The Bloody Trace 血案疑踪（1986）
* Yueyue 月月（1986）
* On Their Own 大学生轶事 or College Student Stories（1987）
* Arc Ligh 弧光（1988）as Jing Huan
* Hit Without Gun 无枪枪手（1988）
* The Illegal Gunman 非法持枪者（1989）
In Hong Kong
* Three... Extremes (2004) - as Mei
* Dumplings (2004) - as Mei
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