The 26-year-old Asian actress, Zhang Ziyi, has been chosen, after many auditions, to portray the main character in Rob Marshall's latest project, "Memoirs Of A Geisha", an adaptation of Arthur Golden's best seller.

The Chinese actress is on the peak of her career at the moment in Asia. "Forbes" magazine in China has just ranked Ziyi as the second most popular celebrity after NBA player Yao Ming. She also made it to the list of the 100 Most Beautiful Women in the World by Harpers & Queen magazine.

Zhang Ziyi studied dance at the Beijing Dance Academy for six years. She enrolled in the prestigious institution when she was 11, in 1990. Nine years later, auteur Zhang Yimou was discovering her, casting Ziyi in his production "The Road Home". That is how she started acting as a career, soon embarking on major roles in movies such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" or "House of Flying Daggers."

Her dancing background proved useful while filming "Memoires Of A Geisha":
"Every day we had to learn all the small gestures that you need to know to become a geisha: walking, kneeling, sitting down and dancing," Zhang says. "And my character (Sayuri Nitta) had a big solo dance, so for that, I had to practice to a very high degree."

The Chinese actress spoke little English when she got the part, but she managed to overcome this obstacle.
Beautiful Zhang confessed that at the beginning of the shooting she doubted herself quite a lot: "I felt this tremendous pressure," she says. "It was a very long casting process, and at the end, they picked me, put all their hopes on me. So I told myself: 'I cannot let them have any regrets. I have to live up to their expectations.'"