At 13 the actress Bai Ling joined the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and spent three years entertaining the troops in Tibet. She was a star in her native China by the end of her teens. She claims that an involvement in the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 hastened her move to America by the age of 20.

She quickly secured her first role in a Hollywood film, The Crow, then was temporarily banned from returning to China after co-starring with Richard Gere in Red Corner. She claims that her small role in Star Wars: Episode III was excised from the film after she was photographed nude for the cover of Playboy.

At 36 she’s as well known for trashy celeb-reality shows and gynaecologically short skirts as for her roles in acclaimed art-house pictures. She claims that deep down she is still a shy Chinese girl, but during the 2005 Berlinale film festival, her privates were revealed with such monotonous regularity that the German tabloids nicknamed her “die Berlinackte” (the Berlinaked). She’s an explosion of mismatched accessories and contradictions.

But although Ling is quite possibly as mad as a bag of snakes, she’s never less than thoroughly entertaining. We meet on a yacht during the Cannes Film Festival. It’s hard to miss — it’s adorned with a sultry picture of the actress doing her well-practised lens-melting smoulder. This is not just an interview, it’s the Bai Ling show.

The morning’s look is retro-futurism by way of Andy Warhol’s factory — a mini-dress that looks as if it was sliced out of a Bridget Riley painting; sparkling earrings that dust her shoulders; thick smears of emerald eye-shadow. She’s so slim that even at its widest her body is no thicker than the average person’s thigh. Her formidable work ethic is such that ten hours later she’s on her sixth outfit, still flinging come-hither poses at any photographer within striking distance.

She’s in Cannes for two reasons — to attend the premiere of Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales (she has a supporting role) and to promote her next project, a German adaptation of Wei Hui’s novel Shanghai Baby that is scheduled to start production in the autumn. But our main topic of conversation is a marvellously macabre satire of the beauty industry called Dumplings and a role which has earned Ling a great deal of respect and several awards.

Written and directed by Fruit Chan and shot by the legendary Christopher Doyle, Dumplings was extended from a short film about an enigmatic Chinese woman called Aunt Mei (Ling) who makes a living selling special youth-giving dumplings to the vain and ageing of Hong Kong high society. The active ingredient is aborted human foetuses. Aunt Mei is a fantastically trashy mismatch of gaudy designer labels topped with a knowing smile.

But according to Ling, this trafficker of illicit beauty is actually a master of Zen Buddhism. “The best Buddhism teachers, they don’t give you answers. They test you, they challenge you, like she did to me. She doesn’t force people to take the dumplings. She says, if you take it, it’s your own fault.”

The theme of the film — that women are encouraged by the beauty industry to associate self-worth with youth and attractiveness — must have a particular resonance for someone who works in an industry that really does treat women as commodities to be regularly replaced by newer models. Ling disagrees. “I don’t think like that. I think you have your own journey, your own gifts to give and receive. If you’re not worried, your beauty is in your spirit.”

Which is all very well as long as you’re a jaw-dropping beauty who can (almost) get away with a bikini top and a couple of belts as a red-carpet ensemble.

It may be a linguistic peculiarity, but Ling often seems to confuse herself with her characters when describing both her own traits and those of the women she plays on screen. Her theory about her own multiple identities (“I realise I have these eight little spirits in me”) seems defined by the roles she plays. “There are of course modern, sexy, hip ones, like how I dress now, like the one I play in Shanghai Baby, she’s a writer, she’s sexy, she’s open, I have all these multiple lovers. Also I am very wise in a way, like the character I play in Dumplings. Also innocent — I show my vulnerability, I show my heart. I speak the truth.”

The character in Shanghai Baby is clearly one that Ling feels particularly close to. And it is also the one likely to trigger another run-in with the Chinese Government. The book was banned in China for its decadence and sexually explicit material. Ling is resigned to another stormy reception. “All my life I feel like I have been writing apology letters — to my parents, to my schoolteacher, to my army leader, to my government.”

The more conservative members of Chinese society have issues with Ling’s more outré escapades. “They see the short dresses,” she says, grabbing her skirt impatiently. “But they don’t know about by spirit and my soul. There is intelligence there.”

If she’s defensive of her Shanghai Baby character, it’s perhaps because the parallels with her own life are obvious. Ling, like her character, is an aspiring novelist; both are perceived as being “wild”.

“Normally, in western culture, a writer is conservative, serious, boring sometimes. If you are a sexy, modern girl, you are an actress or a rock star. Why does a writer have to be boring or an actress have to be stupid? I’m doing all that together in the most intelligent, intriguing, dangerous, charming, romantic, sexy woman in the world. But also beautifully sensitive and vulnerable.”

Dumplings is at the ICA, SW1, on June 16 and around the country from June 30

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