Sculptor Georgina Power, from Madame Tussauds in London, measures actress Fan Bingbing.  (Source: China Daily/Zou Hong)

A professional team from Madame Tussauds in London arrived in Beijing on Wednesday aiming to capture in wax the beauty and elegance of actress Fan Bingbing for the company's Shanghai outlet.

The experts, which include sculptor Georgina Power and photographer Ian Tiger, hoped to collect as many as 200 pieces of information about the 29-year-old beauty.

The wax model that will be created is set to wear the stunning "dragon robe" that Fan delighted photographers with earlier this year on the red carpet at the Cannes International Film Festival.

"She has an elegant shape and lovely posture," said Power, adding that it was an absolute pleasure to work with Fan.

"She comes across as a strong lady with great patience and dignity."

The lifelike sculpture will not be seen for some time because the next stage in its creation will take place over the following months back in London. The wax dummy should be unveiled at the beginning of 2011.

"Fan's every public appearance is so elegant and gorgeous and every character she has played is so riveting and impressive," said Yang Yong, chief of the Madame Tussauds Museum in Shanghai, who gifted Fan a framed poem on Wednesday celebrating her 29th birthday on Sept 16.

Fan said she was honored to think a wax model of her was being created and that she would join the lineup of celebrities at the museum. But she said the sitting progress was torture. "After standing on high heels for three hours, I still feel a little dizzy now," she joked.

After achieving immediate fame by playing a supporting role in the popular 1998 TV series The Princess Huanzhu, Fan rose quickly to superstardom in the following 10 years.

But her fast rise has been dogged with bad publicity as well as good.

For a long time, Fan was often in stories on the gossip pages of magazines and was severely criticized for being too ambitious and for being artificially beautiful. But the actress refused to be bowed down by the bad press.

Now, with her career at a new high, she is keeping a much lower profile.

During a three-month break from work, she kept out of the headlines and quietly visited a group of children in Tibet suffering from heart diseases.

As the first group of those children arrived in Beijing Thursday for treatment she was sponsoring, Fan expressed her delight at doing charity work.

"I just want to spend more time doing what I feel happy and willing to do."