Joan Chen
Joan Chen
Joan Chenis a Chinese-American actress, film director, screenwriter, and film producer. In China she performed in the 1979 film Little Flower and came to international attention for her performance in the 1987 Academy Award-winning film The Last Emperor. She is also known for her roles in Twin Peaks, Red Rose, White Rose, Saving Face and The Home Song Stories, and for directing the feature film Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl...
NationalityChinese
ProfessionActress
Date of Birth26 April 1961
CountryChina
I went to Indiana University for college for a couple of years where I double majored in dance and journalism, and after my sophomore year there, I went to the San Francisco Ballet school for the summer, but then they offered me a scholarship to stay for the year. That's where I danced after the year they offered me a contract with the company.
It's the sacrifice I'm not willing to make right now to leave my children because I felt it wasn't only my choice.
It's a very obsessive profession that you need to stay obsessed to get anywhere, and it's very easy for us to get obsessed and then nothing else matters. I was reading Somerset Maugham's novella, Moon and Sixpense, about this artist based on Gauguin's life. It was so beautifully written. You must be first rate because second rate you might not survive. If you're an accountant, you'll survive second rate. If you chance it big, you may not get anywhere.
I enjoy going back to work now because cinema is going through an exciting period because young people are now going back to the movie theaters. But things are different though.
I'm more interested in...I'm more of a descendent. I'm more critical. It comes from a different place and nowadays the young people know how to make just light entertainment.
In order to dance professionally, you have to start at a young age. No matter what, your muscle structure and your bones have to be groomed from a very young age. Nobody wakes up at 17 and decides to become a ballet dancer. I'm saying that and someone's going to be born tomorrow who decides to do that and I'm going to have my foot in my mouth.
The lowest budget U.S. films are ten times times better than shooting in Tibet.
All Asian parents are into your children having a respectable, decent stable job. Acting was unimaginable to my parents.
There are a lot of stereotypes to be broken which I think a lot of us are doing. What I do is, as soon as people try to pin me down to one kind of part, I'll play a very different kind of role, so it explodes that stereotype.
I take class. I'm always ballet ready. I'm ready to go - got my tights and my shoes.
All teenagers have this desire to somehow run away.
The difference between me and American-born actors is that I came here with the expectation of not being treated fairly.
There is no theoretical study of motherhood. You know, before I became a mother, I did play a mother, but I was like - I was more thinking of my own mother. I was doing my mother.
Acting is actually private.