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
The army was a desirable place to be. It offered a more disciplined life than the countryside.
The acting in China is very stylized and dramatic, and I was just me.
Ma's world is so narrow, ... She's always been an appendage of someone else. That's how her father brought her up. So you ache for her to experience life ... to become liberated, emancipated.
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.
We were so up high that we were really close to heaven, and that does render greater meaning to life.
To be an Asian, to be a minority, not to see ourselves as always me the minority, the victim, you the dominant culture. It's a shift of paradigm. Once you see things differently, you gain power. All of a sudden there is enlightenment.
I don't find intimate scenes more difficult than other scenes.
I never went on an audition - when they were really looking at everybody.
My fairy-tale life ended the moment I wanted to apply for a passport.
I remember watching Swan Lake and everybody looking exactly the same, but being able to relate because they were the only company I had ever seen even on video that had Asian dancers. The Asian community in Hawaii is actually almost as dominant as the Caucasian community. I thought "I can relate to that company because they look like people that I see every day." They weren't all little stick-thin Russian ballerinas.
Not very many companies go through Hawaii on their way to anywhere. San Francisco Ballet was the only company I remember, and Bolshoi, coming through Hawaii when I was younger.
I was frustrated. I was doing some bad movies, movies that I knew going in were not going to be great.
I grew up in Honolulu. It's not the ballet cultural mecca by any stretch of the imagination. People are much more familiar with hula than they are with ballet.
I know what actors fear, what they like; I know how to get things out of them and I listen to them better, since I've been there.