Bai Ling goes a little crazy in ‘Crank’

McClatchy Newspapers

You would never know from her flamboyant fashion sense and wild acting roles that Bai Ling spent her early years growing up in China with a paralyzing fear of people.

“I was afraid of human beings. I was so afraid I could not talk. I was mute. I would stand there frozen,” Bai Ling says during a telephone call from San Francisco. It is the latest stop on a barnstorming tour to promote her new movie “Crank: High Voltage.”

That fear became so intense that when she turned 18, Bai Ling considered committing suicide and ended up in a mental hospital. She stayed for a few months until she found inner peace.

It was her grandmother who finally reminded her about how beautiful and precious life can be.

“I am still not sure about human beings because they are not that pure a lot of times,” Bai Ling says. “Sometimes I am very cautious. But, at other times, I am very trusting. I tell people exactly what is on my mind. I learned to live life how I feel, to the extreme. I now know you must live life as if it is the last precious breath.”

That’s why she is so bold with her look and the films she decides to make. “Crank: High Voltage” is a perfect example. The film stars Jason Statham as a man who must continuously get huge electrical shocks to keep his heart going. It is loaded with gunbattles, explosions and plenty of fight sequences.

Bai Ling plays Ria, the woman who gets caught up in the search to find the mobster who put Statham’s character into such an electrifying situation.

“Ria is a force of energy and craziness and passion and extremes,” Bai Ling says. “It was a fun journey for me because I got to go a little crazy.”

Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor signed off on the craziness. They gave Bai Ling the freedom to say or do anything she wanted on screen. That led to some odd moments when second versions of scenes had to be filmed for the television version of the movie.

In the new scenes, Bai Ling would often replace a curse word with a phrase such as “shiny diaper.” The dialogue was so off-the-wall Statham could not stop laughing.

“If you give me freedom, then I will say magic, stupid, silly things,” Bai Ling says.

“Crank: High Voltage” is just the latest work for the actress, who has had a host of different roles over the years. Her credits include movies such as “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” and “The Crow” plus TV shows such as “Angel,” “Lost” and “Jake 2.0.” Bai Ling won the Asian Oscar for her work in “Dumplings,” her first Hong Kong film.

Unlike most of those other acting jobs, in “Crank: High Voltage” Bai Ling also was given the freedom to help create the look for her character. And Ria has a look as bold as anything Bai Ling would wear.

“It comes from my wild spirit. I think in a previous life I was a wild animal,” Bai Ling says of her fashion sense. “I was a cheetah.”

Crank is rated R and runs 1 hour and 36 minutes.