Famous for her Golden Rooster and Golden Phoenix award-winning performances in the films Breaking the Silence (2000) and The Story of Qiu Ju (1992), she is also notable for her Hong Kong Film Award-winning work in Curse of the Golden Flower (2006).
While studying at Beijing's Central Academy of Drama, she was cast as the lead character in her debut film, the Zhang Yimou-directed feature Red Sorghum.
She starred in Raise the Red Lantern, a 1991 feature that was nominated for an Academy Award in the foreign language category.
The daughter of Gong Lize and Liu Ying, she spent her youth in Shen Yang, China. Following a high-profile relationship with Director Zhang Yimou, she married Business executive Ooi Hoe Soeng; the couple divorced in 2010 after fourteen years of marriage.
She co-starred with Jeremy Irons in the English-language feature film Chinese Box.
