Yes. Otherwise I could have done a lot of Hollywood movies. After Crouching Tiger I got a lot of offers, but I turned them down because they were all victim roles - poor girls sold to America to be a wife or whatever. I know I have the ability to go deeper, to take on more original roles than that.

Wanting to be in a Western film won't get me very far. Unless the opportunity arose, it doesn't matter how much I want to be in one. But if an opportunity did arise, no actor would pass it up.

Actually I ran away from school when I was 13. No one could find me, and the police were called. I was just hiding in a little thicket of grass at my school, and went to sleep.

I knew nothing about martial arts. And I don't really like it! But in the film, I not only had to pretend that I knew all about it, I had to be the best at it. That was very difficult.

There are films you see that only reach your eyes. Then there are films that you can watch... that reach down to your throat, or reach your heart. "In the Mood for Love," though, reached all the way to my belly.

I want, through my roles, to express the parts in the hearts of Chinese women that they feel unable to let out.

In China, we don't consider someone truly beautiful until we have known them for a long time, and we know what's underneath the skin.