When a celebrity shaves her head, the public sits up and notices, but Chen Xiaoxu's gleaming scalp was only the start of the shock.

Recently, two famous women shaved their heads and adapted the “skin head" look. Equally shocking when their pictures appeared in the tabloids, it turns out that both women exposed their scalps for personal reasons. Britney Spears apparently did it on a crazy impulse (although rumors circulating say she had been pulling chunks of her hair out in the days before the buzz), while Chinese actress Chen Xiaoxu did it for a spiritual reason; she is becoming a Buddhist nun.

Spears looks more gruesome than shocking—gone are her days of school girl uniforms and being every guys' fantasy—and her new 'do is being attributed to postnatal depression (oh yeah, she's also in rehab).

On the other hand, Chen's story is more intriguing. Being an actress, poet, successful business woman, millionaire and now a Buddhist nun, Chen, 40, also convinced her husband and business partner Hao Tong to become a Buddhist monk and renounce the mundane world with her.

At the age of 20, Chen played Lin Daiyu, the lead female role in the TV drama “The Dream of the Red Chamber,” a classic piece of Chinese literature from the 17th century. Her skinny, sentimental and highly intelligent image impressed Chinese audiences; the show became so popular that it re-played 700 times in the past 20 years. Chen's connection to drama was like Vivian Leigh in “Gone with the Wind”: “I am Lin Daiyu. Maybe I was her in my previous life. I cannot play any other role in this production for if I did, the audience would think Lin Daiyu was playing other girls.” Chen used this rhetoric to beat out thousands of auditioning actors to win the role.

But being fixated on Lin turned out to be a curse for her acting career. Type cast as Lin, Chen's next role was more of the same. Directors and audiences believed she was only able to play Lin and no other roles were offered to her. Chen disappeared from the limelight and drifted around Beijing for three years. When she emerged, it was with a bang, as the executive of a top Beijing advertising agency.

While playing Lin sank Chen's acting career, it enormously helped her in the advertisement world. One of her clients told her that, “I chose your company because Lin Daiyu would not cheat!” In a few years' time, Chen's company reached a net profit of ¥200 million a year.

“I once saw accumulating fortune as one of my life goals, but after gaining everything, I still find myself unhappy,” Chen said when she converted to Buddhism.

Chen was so into the religion that in her grand office, there hung a sign reading “Namo Amitabha” (meaning may Buddha preserve us), and according to her employees, Chen reads two kinds of sutras morning and evening. During lunch breaks Chen must meditate for 30 minutes no mater how busy she is.

“I don't agree that Buddhism teaches people to lead a life of deprivation. Buddha was really simply encouraging people to create a happy world for themselves,” Chen once said during an interview with the New York Times. Rumor has it (and this is to be taken with a giant grain of salt) that Chen was recently diagnosed with breast cancer, which triggered her decision to become a nun.

For us still struggling in this world, Chen's transformation may be seen as a fading star's last grasp at something real (sorry Madonna), or it may be that Chen is actually reaching another spiritual level, showing us that there may in fact be more to life than money and fame.