Eva Huang Shengyi

Eva Huang Shengyi, 黄圣依 (aka Eva Huang or Eva Wong) is a beautiful young Chinese actress and singer. She was born in Shanghai on February 11, 1983. She studied acting and graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 2001.

In 2004, she landed her first film role playing the part of Fong, a mute girl in in Kung Fu Hustle directed by and staaring Stephen Chow. Eva also signed to Chow's company, but ended up in a legal battle after she did a magazine photo shoot without her agency's involvement, breaching her contract. Eva claimed she was misled into signing the contract and Chow's company wasn't doing a good enough job of getting her jobs. 

The lawsuit received a lot of publicity in China and by fighting it, she may have been risking her career since Chow is one of the most commercially succesful film producers in China and big talent companies usually have much more power than the actors they represent. The case was ultimately settled in 2007 and it was reported that she had to pay 6 million RMB (U.S. $1-1.5 million) although Eva denied this. Regardless, her popularity continued to increase as she appeared in other films such as Chinese comedy Call for Love and TV dramas.

Eva also got a record contract and released her self-titled album in 2007. Here's one of her music videos.

Not shying from being a bit independent and slightly controversial on ocassion, Eva also posed for the September 2008 issue of Maxim China. Although in itself, no big deal, the cover shot (below) shows Eva nude although covered up. This caused a bit of a stir in Chinese blogs since Chinese celebrities tend to portray fairly conservative images. Personally, I'm not at all offended by a beautiful woman posing nude if she chooses to do so and I wouldn't mind seeing more of Eva as I'm sure many other men would.

Finally, here's a Chinese beer commercial with Eva Huang which seems a bit more like a Zhang Yimou film than a typical beer commercial.