Reporters at a Shanghai Film Festival press conference were rather fiesty, quizzing Zhao on her poison potential and asking why her film was entered for awards when everyone knows it's a bomb.

She remained unruffled, and was similarly nonchalant about the the recent disclosure on the Internet of the true age of a large group of actresses, revealing her to be an old maid. She's all of 29, but that's a decade older than Liu Yifei, who's now playing the sorts of martial arts heroines that made Zhao famous.