THE PERFECT LOVERS...ZIYI ZHANG AND TAKESHI KANESHIRO

Making their American musical stage debuts in "The King and I" are Chinese film stars Ziyi Zhang and Takeshi Kaneshiro.

This is the second pairing for the two...since they starred together on-screen in the 2004 Zhang Yimou romantic era-drama "House of Flying Daggers".

Takeshi has already been known both in Asia and the United States for his singing...but Ziyi had only sung Chinese songs and had yet to do any singing in an American film.

Many people would think that the 2006 drama "Memoirs of a Geisha" was her first film. They would be wrong. She had appeared with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in a non-English-speaking role...that of the assassin Hu Lin in "Rush Hour 2". Her role as Chiyo/Sayuri was her first English-speaking role. She has since done more...and grants interviews in English and forgoes interpreters, saying that if she makes a mistake it would be her own and not an interpreter.

Ziyi's repertoire is expansive. She played the young sword thief in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", the kidnapped princess in the Korean costume-drama "The Warrior", and many other films since being discovered by Zhang Yimou at the age of 18 for his film "The Road Home". Her appearance in "Memoirs of a Geisha" re-united her with her "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" co-star Michelle Yeoh, who made her American film debut as a Chinese agent opposite Pierce Brosnan in "Tomorrow Never Dies".

Takeshi has appeared on-screen in comedies and musicals as well as dramas. He has also appeared onstage in China and Japan, the land of his father's birth. Takeshi holds citizenship in both Taiwan and Japan and speaks and sings English fluently since he was a student at the American School in Taipei. Playing the Burmese emissary Lun Tha is a first for Takeshi, who also excels as a model, as the picture proves. When he and Ziyi had worked together, there were rumors of a love affair blossoming between the two of them.

"I believe in method acting", he once replied in an interview. "If anything comes out of that...it just proves that the both of us are very good actors".