Ma Liang (from left), Zhou Xun and Liu Chang at the news conference for A Journey, Through Time, With Anthony.[Photo by Jiangdong/China Daily]

China's entertainment media have shown interest in reporting on Zhou's personal life, especially since her high-profile wedding to Chinese-American actor Archie David Kao last July. So it wasn't surprising when some reporters asked her at the Feb 2 conference, "Why didn't you choose your handsome husband to play the lead actor?"

Zhou replied that her debut as a producer was her professional business.

Just two hours later and four kilometers away in Beijing, actress and director Xu Jinglei faced similar questions about her new movie, Somewhere Only We Know.

Hailed as a top Chinese actress since the early 2000s, along with Zhang Ziyi and Zhao Wei, Xu, 41, has always shown a keen interest in movie-making. Somewhere Only We Know, a romance set in Prague, is her sixth directorial production.

Before that, Xu won the award for best director at the 2004 San Sebastian International Film Festival for her second directorial venture Letter From an Unknown Woman, based on the namesake novella by Austrian author Stefan Zweig.

Somewhere Only We Know, which revolves around an urban white-collar woman's search for true love through the romantic Czech capital, was released on Feb 10 across Chinese mainland theaters, and is expected to make box-office profits around Valentine's Day on Feb 14.

But at Feb 2's media event for the movie's promotion, Xu and her cast members had to face some questions that appeared intended to tease out details of her personal life.

"Director Xu is a veteran filmmaker of romance productions. Did she teach you some skills that she has used with her partner?" was one such query thrown at Rayza, a supporting actress in the movie. Standing next to the 29-year-old Rayza, Xu kept lowering her head to hide her emotions as the paparazzo-style frenzy mounted.

When Zhao Wei's So Young grossed a landmark box office for female directors at 400 million yuan in 2013, her name was still associated with "sexy red lips" in media headlines.

"It can be regarded as gender discrimination in some sense. The talents of actresses turned filmmakers are hard to get acknowledged," says Gu Zi, a Dalian-based movie critic.

"But if their reputation can help the box office, they will have to put up with it," he says of female movie celebrities who are often accosted by chasers of gossip at promotional events.