Bai Ling cranks up moonstruck life for "High Voltage"

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Chinese-American actress Bai Ling really thinks she is from the moon, and that her grandmother lives there. Really, truly.

The actress, who stars in the action movie "Crank High Voltage" that opened on Friday, has made the admission before, and she insists she is not crazy -- just inspired.

"I'm not really in reality. I'm in my own universe and my mind is a million miles somewhere else," said Bai, who won a Golden Horse award, a Chinese-language film honor, for her supporting role in 2004 movie "Dumplings."

"Why I feel like I come from the moon is because my mother told me I was found somewhere," she said, explaining that at night she often sees the grandmother who raised her in the celestial sphere.

During a stay at a mental hospital in China as a teenager, after a difficult spell in the army, Bai said she told the staff that she was of sound mind.

"I went to the nurse, I said, 'Nurse I'm not crazy. I'm an actress, I want to get out of here, I'm doing a movie,'" she told Reuters in a recent interview.

As improbable as it may have seemed at the time, Bai truly was a budding actress. Soon after her release from the hospital, she was cast in a stage play, then went on to win roles in a number of Chinese movies in the 1980s.

So, as impossible as it may seem that she's from the moon and no matter what some moviegoers may say about her sometimes odd fashion choices, she is, nonetheless, a solid actress.