When we meet for this interview in a hotel room during the Cannes Film Festival, Zhou – a former brand ambassador for Burberry – looks every bit the star, wearing black pinstripe trousers, a feathery gold halter-neck top and a rose-gold watch.

She has a translator – although her English, with or without the Singaporean twang, is far better than she gives herself credit for.

This time, Zhou committed without even reading a script. In fact, there was no complete script until 11 days before the shoot began, with Chen’s schedule dictating that he write something quickly.

Even so, there was enough time for some research. “He sent us 10 movies to watch before we started filming,” Zhou explains.

Chief among them was François Truffaut’s aforementioned Jules et Jim. “I saw it. I liked it,” she says, rather briskly. The Truffaut classic formed a template for Chen’s script.

Set in Yanji, northern China, The Breaking Ice charts the casual-but-warm bond forged between three twenty-somethings: Zhou’s bus tour guide Nana, her friend and on-off boyfriend Xiao (Qu Chuxiao), who works in a family-owned Korean restaurant, and mentally troubled city dweller Haofeng (Lui Haoran), who is initially in town for a wedding.

Zhou, who previously starred with Liu in the 2021 crime drama Fire on the Plain, didn’t just dive into Jules et Jim.

“Before we started shooting, I went on three to four trips with a tour guide,” she says. “I went on trips with different tour guides from all different places to learn from them.”

Really, though, shadowing a real-life tour operator was secondary to the relationship she built with her two male co-stars. “It was actually a very pleasurable journey. We all became very good friends. Bros!” she says.

Filmed in the dead of winter – temperatures plummeted to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 22 degrees Celsius) on occasions – it was a gruelling shoot. “I’m actually very afraid of the cold,” Zhou says. “But the other two, they were very, very professional in terms of persisting with it.”

Zhou, who would regularly gather her co-stars and director in her hotel room to chow down on her beloved spicy hotpot, at least had the advantage of wearing a hat. “The others’ characters … they’re not wearing hats. Two frozen heads in front of me – just really funny,” she says, giggling.

Chen shaped the characters around his actors, with Nana having originally come from a big city; Zhou was similarly born in Shijiazhuang, in Hebei province. As she points out, her character’s city origins are what attracts her to Haofeng at first.

“There’s a natural bond between us when we first meet,” she says. “Haofeng and Nana, they have seen the bigger cities and the outside world. So they know what’s going on outside this small town.”

It also puts them at odds, ever so slightly, with Xiao, a college drop-out now helping out in his aunt’s restaurant.

What results is a beguiling Gen Z drama that feels extremely rare in the realms of Chinese cinema – one that perhaps only an outsider like Chen could have made.

Zhou is hopeful it will contribute to elevating her country’s cinematic output to the global stage. “I really expect and I look forward to seeing a better Chinese cinema,” she says. “We will see.”

Zhou was taking a college entrance exam in Nanjing when she was approached by a talent scout on the lookout for young girls to star in Zhang’s Under the Hawthorn Tree.

“I’d never thought about becoming an actor,” she says. Asked to travel to Beijing then, she was convinced it was a scam and arrived with an entourage of family members. But the offer was genuine, and she was eventually cast as Jing Qiu, a high-school student who falls for a prospector.

Zhou’s acclaimed turn won her best actress at Spain’s Valladolid International Film Festival, and the awards kept coming as her career developed.

Already 13 years in the film business, the actress feels that she’s getting more seasoned. “Each time I have a role, I feel I am growing up,” she says.

Zhou has also turned her hand to producing – on the 2019 drama On the Balcony, in which she stars. While she had always “dreamed of working on a film behind the scenes”, the project came with huge challenges, not least playing the role of a mentally disabled girl.

“Her mindset was still a teenager in an adult body. So I was quite anxious,” she says. “I didn’t know how to express myself, how to become a person with this infirmity. So I watched documentaries and researched so I could express reality. That’s very difficult because I didn’t have contact with people like that.”

Whether she’ll follow Gong and Zhang Ziyi into Hollywood remains to be seen, but her horizons stretch further than the all-too-common superhero role.

“I want to try new things. Just like any actor, I think everyone would like to try what’s new, what’s challenging. So whenever there is a good story, or a very funny script, I want to try. I want to try … not to limit myself.

“I’m not saying I want to try to be a superhero – or another kind of character. I want to try many, many things. The road ahead is still long. It’s like life. You have to touch many, many things to enrich your experience, to be an elegant woman.”