Gao Yuanyuan
Chinese actress
Gao Yuanyuan (Chinese: 高圆圆; pinyin: Gāo yuányuán, born 5 October 1979) is a Chinese actress. She gained attention in 2000 for appearing in a lozenge commercial and achieved her early success with the role of Zhou Zhiruo in the wuxia series The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber (2003). Her other notable works include the films Shanghai Dreams (2005), City of Life and Death (2009), Don't Go Breaking My Heart (2011), Caught in the Web (2012), But Always (2014), as well as the television series We Get Married (2013).
She ranked 64th on Forbes China Celebrity 100 list in 2013, 40th in 2014, 76th in 2015, and 86th in 2017.
Career
Gao Yuanyuan was born in Beijing and graduated from China Institute of Industrial Relations. Gao entered the entertainment industry in 1996. Gao, unlike other mainland Chinese actresses, did not graduate from any drama academic institutions. Rather, she started acting in a television commercial for Meadow Gold ice-cream after being spotted on the street at Beijing's Wangfujing shopping district.
Gao made her debut in the 1997 film Spicy Love Soup. Thereafter, she starred in Beijing Bicycle (2001), which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival and romance film Spring Subway (2002).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Gao Yuanyuan” as chinese actress. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as chinese actress. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q702999. VIAF identifies the subject as 95119065. The Library of Congress control number is no2005122208. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979, 2000, 2003 and 2005.
A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
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- Building a first chronology
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Gao Yuanyuan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.