Zhao Liying is a Chinese TV and film actress who is currently known as the most paid Chinese TV actress among her contemporaries. Hailing from a very humble childhood, Zhao was quite well aware of her good looks and the acting talent that she possessed, but was not quite confident about making it big in the entertainment industry. The fate had other plans for her and when she finally indulged herself in the acting business, she struck gold. She started her acting career with ‘Century Endless Love’, a series which was never broadcast. She made her debut with the 2007 ‘Nanyue King’ and in the same year, she appeared in the film ‘Mudan Pavilion’. After doing several big and small roles in films and TV, it was the TV series ‘The Legend of Lu Zhen’ that got her stupendous exposure in the industry. She played the titular role in the series. After that, she appeared in back-to-back successful TV series’ and slowly became one of the best Chinese TV actors of the present times. She has been honoured with several awards for her performances.

Zhao Liying was born on 16th October 1987 in Langfang, Hebei Provice of China into a middle class family. She grew up in her hometown as an ordinary kid without any serious expectations of making a career in the show business. But somewhere during her high school days, she became increasingly interested in a career in films and TV.

She was good at studies and did some plays in the high school and wanted to pursue acting, but her parents opposed that, so she had to attend Langfang School and study Electronic Information engineering. She worked as a secretary in a local company, and at the same time, she started auditioning for film and TV roles.

The year 2006 proved life turning for her, as she was chosen as the final winner for the ‘Yahoo Search Star Game’. She got wide exposure, and thanks to her blissful ‘girl next door’ looks, talent agencies rushed to sign her on. She then signed on with Huayi Brothers as a fresh talent, and got some early stints in form of advertisements, and in one of her early ads she featured with a popular Chinese actress Zhou Xun and took a few tips from her to improve her acting.

As expected, Zhao started getting offers soon enough and shot for small parts in a couple of TV series’, which never went on-air. For a brief period of time, Zhao became extremely disheartened, though the offers didn’t stop coming her way, most of them were small and insignificant parts. But she said yes to them nevertheless and finally made her debut with the 2007 series ‘Nanyue King’.