Bai, Bai, Baby!

Not long ago tawny Chinese actress Bai Ling opened her eyes on a new sunny day, in her own bedroom, in her own house in Santa Monica, California, which is not far from the ocean, and lay there, perfectly naked, listening to birds. She was 34 and a fixture on the L.A. party scene, always dressed in as little as possible. Back in China she had once been in the People's Liberation Army. She'd also once been in a mental institution. More recently, as an actress, she'd played a villain in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Shortly she would appear in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, the last of the series; The Beautiful Country, opposite Nick Nolte; and a new Ben Affleck vehicle, Man About Town. At the moment, though, she was telling a little about herself, speaking rapidly in fractured English, and it was, in all ways, quite revealing because that's just the way she is.

"Most of the time in my room I'm naked, and sometimes here I talk to my agent or producers or directors, and they don't even know I'm naked," she said. "Oh yes, I'm completely naked in my room!

"Oh my God," she continued brightly. "Last night I went to this party. I met somebody, a man, and we hit it off. Can I talk to you freely? It was two A.M., and we're at his place. He said, 'Are you sure you want to drive home now?' I said, 'Are you going to be nice to me?' He said, 'Yes.' So I stayed until morning."

She paused. It was early in the afternoon. Outside, the birds were still singing.

"I feel like right now a one-night stand and a lifetime commitment are the same thing," she said. "I'll tell you why. If anybody can make you feel that excitement--as you Westerners say, butterflies in the stomach, that fever in the forehead--then life is so much more beautiful than normal. Things have their own destiny. And for as long as it lasts--a night, two nights, a month or a lifetime--I feel that it's a gift. Some people say you have only one soul mate. For me there's probably 52 or 68. I see a lot of beauty in everyone."

Surrounded by red sheets, she giggled throatily and said, "Because I'm Bai Ling, my name in English means 'white spirit.' I have such a free spirit. There's no law or rule. I love butterflies. I put them on my hair once in a while. They are so precious. But why? Because their life is so short. But the visual impact you remember forever. There is no death. It's just a transformation in how you look at it."

Her part in Star Wars Episode III will also feature a kind of transformation. Playing a senator, she will appear mainly in the nude, mainly covered with tattoos, and is entirely thankful to have gotten the job. "People ask me how the Star Wars experience was," she said. "I feel like basically it is its own real world and I'm the alien dropped in from the sky, through the ceiling, to their city to visit for a while. It's an inverse feeling. You know what I mean?"

Not really. But no matter, because really there was no time for it to matter. Gliding from one subject to another, she began to remember life in China. She recalled that up until the age of 10 she spent much of her time cavorting around courtyards in the nude, chasing things. "I chased after a dog, a chicken or a goose, a sheep or a squirrel or a butterfly," she said. Even so, she felt repressed by school and by her parents--her dad was a music teacher, her mother a dancer--and in her 14th year she joined the USO-like entertainment division of the Chinese army. She went to Tibet. She drank too much, smoked too many cigarettes, danced too wildly, wore her skirts too short, got in lots of trouble. "Constantly I was writing apology letters," she said, "to my teacher, my parents, my leaders, the soldiers, the governor, to everyone." She is writing a book about her experience, to be titled A Cloud Falling From the Sky: Dreams of Tibet. She is on page 310, with more to go. "My book is very sexual," she murmured. "Very provocative, very cruel, very sad, but very beautiful--oh, so many words tangled together!"

And then, sitting up, she proceeded to tangle with many words herself. "The most powerful, simple way to reach a Zen state is by orgasm," she said dreamily. "When you reach orgasm, you're not aware of anything. You've become a part of nature. It makes me feel like I'm in heaven. It's like everything is muted. That's the only word I can think of. I tell my lovers, 'You mute me.' Inside of love-making I am dissolved.

"You know," she went on, "I just discovered that I have these eight little spirits in me--a wise one, a mischievous one, a sexy one, a provocative one.... When I go to parties people always ask me, 'Why do you dress so sexy?' Well, it's just at that time the sexy girl has taken over. A part of me is asking, 'Is that skirt too short? Is that too see-through?' And she's like, 'You have your underwear on. Everything's covered. Let's go party!' "

She thought about that for a while and finally said, "Do you think I'm crazy?"

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After leaving the People's Liberation Army she began suffering from depression and was committed to a mental hospital. She was sedated and may have undergone electroshock therapy. She was locked in strange rooms, shower rooms, bathrooms, hallways. Frozen in one position for hours on end she watched the snow outside her window and thought, (text concluded on page 150)Bài Ling(continued from page 141) How gently the snow touches the ground. Other patients stole her food. She stole food too. She was always hungry. Soon life became meaningless, and she thought about committing suicide. Once, she went up to a nurse and said, "I'm not a patient; I'm an actress! I'm here to experience things for a role!" She was taken back to her room and locked in again.

Upon her release she joined the Szechwan Theater Company. She began making movies; in 1988 she broke through, playing a mentally ill woman. The next year she took part in the Tiananmen Square protests and witnessed the massacre. At the age of 21 she came to New York and took classes at the Lee Strasberg Institute. In 1997 she played a Chinese lawyer opposite Richard Gere in Red Corner. The film took on China's human-rights abuses, and China responded by revoking her passport. She has dated singer Chris Isaak and French director Luc Besson. She has made love to women, as well as men; as the joke goes, she is Bai.

Lounging around her bedroom, she said many curious, fantastical things. She said, "I sometimes feel so strange in L.A. I feel like there are no people here during the day, only freeways and the big open sky. But then in the evening, when you go to a party, everybody just emerges from the pavement." Concerning desserts she said, "My favorite is hot, hot, burningly hot apple tart, with cold ice cream. Just somehow it's extremely exciting." Concerning fondue she said, "The cheese is so soft and warm and it's like you're lost in it, and that's sexy." Concerning cigars she said, "I like everything extreme. So when you smoke, let's smoke something big and strong."

A while later, drifting away from her sheets, she said, "I want to tell you some crazy stuff that I forgot. It's something very interesting." But the time for remembrance was past. Soon she would go out and then return home again, to sit on her terrace and listen to the wind. Right now, though, she was standing in front of a mirror, gazing at her slender, naked, reflected self.

"Sometimes I can be a little confused," she said. "The journey here could have completely messed me up, but I'm telling you the truth of my experience. I am much more simple now, much more beautiful, much more wise." Finally she looked at herself much more closely and said, "I really like my breasts and my nipples when it's hot and they're kind of big and kind of--how do you say it--upwonged? Upnoxious? Pernoxious? Unctnoxious? Oh, what's the word! No, no, not obnoxious. More like oblonxious. Anyway, it's something full of sexuality. I see this kind of animal. I see the animal in me."

See more of Bai Ling at cyber.playboy.com.