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
In China we use the word baptism a lot, it's a very revolutionary word.
Now I have a family. I have a real home, a place I really want to come back to. I get really homesick before because there wasn't much to be missed.
Dailies means every day you have 20 rolls, and here I was with 200 rolls of film.
I went to California to study drama and study film, still with the goal of going back to China. I stayed for at least four years and then I visited China. I was a little lost. I was very homesick. I took a risk, I went back to China and realized that I have actually changed, that China as a whole wasn't what I imagined it to be.
I was always so anxious to do the right thing, politically righteous, socially acceptable. It wouldn't have been good. It wouldn't have suited my personality because there is so much complication I didn't understand as a kid.
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.
Having been an actress was also good because I know how to talk to the actors. I know what comes through and what doesn't and often times I've worked with a director whose directions I knew I'd just better not try to listen to because it messes you up. So, having had an acting background really helped.
All my girlfriends were learning musical instruments - forced to learn musical instruments because if they knew a musical instrument, they would be in the performance troupe. Even if they were sent down. Then they wouldn't be in the fields. Then they'd probably be treated a little better. That was the hope.
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.
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 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.