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 think what's the most important thing for any mother is whether or not my children are going to be happy. My interpretation of that really is your fierce and savage love for your children. All motherly love is really without reason and logic. It's totally savage and that's an act out of love.
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.
All Asian parents are into your children having a respectable, decent stable job. Acting was unimaginable to my parents.
I will always have a career. I believe in working. I don't believe that taking care of your house and children is enough for a woman. You don't feel complete.
There are a few stories that I like, but I don't know how to approach them because there's no part for me-just books I read.
When I was younger, I struggled against, you know, I don't want to be pigeon-holed. And I, you know - Basically, now you want to be pigeon-holed. It's your niche.
You have to say, I will wither if I don't do it, I'll die if I don't do it. It has to be that big of a determination, that much of a need.
Black people are doing a lot better lately. They're getting a lot more better roles and they have fought for a long time.
When I stayed with a bunch of herding girls-young intellectuals sent down to herd military horses-they taught me how to take warm baths.
Both my parents are very hard-working, very caring, studious people. They take their profession very very seriously. Especially in China, there is not much of a reward other than saving lives. So I have a very very high respect for the profession of medicine. That could be a subconscious reason.
I did somehow manage to get into a college in China that trains diplomats when I was 17, one year before my peers could go, which is very very difficult. I was very proud I did.
I don't believe beauty exists without suffering-that's just a tourist picture in a travel agency, which isn't beautiful to me.
Only when you poeticize something does it become universal. I believe when your experience is more crystallized through distance and time, you're more able to poeticize something.
There are only so many roles as empresses... but I've had a lot of offers to play vampires.