Xu Jiao

A rising star in the Eastern sky, Chinese child actress Xu Jiao's celebrated first role came in the quirky foreign family flick "CJ7." Hardly your prototypical 10 year-old princess, Jiao donned short hair to play the young male lead. Her experiment paid off big time, winning her a Hong Kong Film Award for Best New Performer, and a handful of other nominations, including one stateside for Best Performance in an International Feature Film from the Young Artist Awards. Jiao followed up with "Hua Mulan" in 2009, playing the female warrior of Chinese lore in her early years (prior to the character's own gender obfuscation). Jaio's counterpart Wei Zhao garnered widespread acclaim for her portrayal of the elder Mulan, and was honored as Best Actress at the Shanghai Film Critics Awards. In 2010, Jiao appeared in the boisterous parody "Just Another Pandora's Box," which spoofs John Woo's epic "Red Cliff" with a flurry of pop culture references to U.S. fare like "Kung-Fu Panda" and "Titanic." "Future X-Cops" cast Jiao as daughter to a cyborg policeman out to foil a time-bending terrorist plot, and in 2011, she landed a starring role in "Starry Starry Night," an escapist fantasy based upon a popular Chinese picture book.