Although she once said she didn’t like being compared to popular Chinese star Zhang Ziyi, Zhang Jingchu, who starred in the 2005 Berlin Film Festival award winner “Peacock,” is heading for Hollywood in a way similar to Zhang Ziyi.

As the new Asian face in “Rush Hour 3,” Zhang Jingchu shone on the red carpet at the film’s July 30 premiere*, together with veteran actors Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, at Mann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

Six years ago, Zhang Ziyi did the same thing for “Rush Hour 2.”

After returning to China, Zhang Jingchu told the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post that she would devote herself more to working in Hollywood in the future.

Thanks to the training she received prior to shooting “Rush Hour 3,” the star conquered* the first barrier to a successful Hollywood career: the English language.

“Speaking English was no problem for me. But it was the first time I performed in English,” she said. “Performing was a more difficult thing, because you had to deliver emotions through your words. It was really a challenge.”

Zhang Jingchu plays an American-born Chinese college student in the film. The role requires her to speak in English with a Los Angeles accent*.

After she signed the contract, the producers arranged for her to be taught by the same dialect teacher who taught Zhang Ziyi for “Memoirs of a Geisha.”

“I practiced my lines* daily, feeling like I have returned to school in my lines classes,” Zhang Jingchu recalled.

Her persistence* has been rewarded. “At the end, many people thought I was born in America,” she said.

Reports say later this year Zhang Jingchu will work with Chan again, this time in “Shinjuku,” a film about Chinese migrants in Japan.

(SD-Agencies)