Lights, Camera, Smash! Isabel Zhong finds stability between badminton and appearing career

If most expert badminton players had ever been to google themselves, the first result would in all likelihood be their BWF (Badminton World Federation) profile. In the case of Isabel Zhong of the U.S., a singles competitor on the India Open, you may simply get her IMDb (Internet Movie Database) profile instead. Zhong has been acting for more than one year but has a fairly complete body of labor comprising a film, two TV shows, and 4 brief movies to her credit. She’s also shot several TV commercials and has another film within the works. The 26-12 months-antique from Los Angeles failed to start off intending to be an actor, though. Badminton became her first ardor, and it runs in her family. Her father, Wei Zhong, turned into a former badminton instructor who became deputed by Chinese authorities to teach in Peru, where Zhong was born. “Before he went there, dad turned into the instruct in China too. One of his students became (former Olympic bronze medallist and in the end China countrywide train) Li Yongbo,” says Zhong.

When the circle of relatives moved to the U.S. A year after her birth, Zhong would select the sport, subsequently winning a junior national title. But she gave it up not long after. “There isn’t loads of money in badminton inside the U.S. There is not lots of help nor quite a few sponsors. I become taking into account my destiny, so I determined to move to high school and get a ordinary job. It changed into greater of a leisure component, and I befell to be appropriate at it. I took a seven-year spoil from it,” says Zhong. She was given a degree in psychology and worked for some time in San Francisco, California, earlier than returning to Los Angeles, where her mother and father run a recreational badminton membership. “At that point, it becomes either get any other activity or try something new. I desired to task myself, so I decided to get lower back into it,” she says. Acting passed off across the identical time. “It began due to the fact I turned into scouted to audition. I become just taking walks inside the streets when a lady approached me and asked me if I wanted to be in a film. I gave an audition, were given called returned for some other, and sooner or later I were given to act,” she says.