Joan Chen Quotations

The romantic love we feel toward the opposite sex is probably one extra help from God to bring you together, but that's it. All the rest of it, the true love, is the test.

All teenagers have this desire to somehow run away.

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.

All Asian parents are into your children having a respectable, decent stable job. Acting was unimaginable to my parents.

As an actress I find the most enjoyable part of acting is really just to please the director. I just want to please my director.

I don't find intimate scenes more difficult than other scenes.

Acting for me is not a bad habit like smoking that I must make an effort to quit. I love acting; I love directing.

For the past few years, I was the more visible Asian performer, and I think it gave young girls a kind of role model showing it's possible to actually reach success doing movies.

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.

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.

Beauty is the result of having been through an experience all the way through to the end-therefore it has a poignancy. Beauty that is singular always comes from following an experience to the point where you can go no further.

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 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.

How I was raised is what I am today.

I don't want to tell people what I make. It's a lot more than I ever dreamed of as a kid. I never think about it.

I would never offer advice without the person asking for it. I, in general, don't believe in giving advice, actually, as a human being I don't.

If you know how to do a job very well, you keep doing it.

The difference between me and American-born actors is that I came here with the expectation of not being treated fairly.

When you feel so strongly about something and other people feel equally strongly, you have to feel stronger about it in order to succeed.

Physical hunger and physical poverty is something I could only imagine. I've been poor when I was in China... As kids we never had to starve, but just didn't have enough meat, enough rice.

There are many ways you can make money. Certain ways will make you happy, certain other ways will make other people happy. But if you go in because there's money in there, you're bound to fail, bound to fail!

How do you explain certain physical qualities that somehow sell on screen? You're born with it... Certain people are just more watchable, and I was more watchable, but I don't think I understood acting or drama very well when I was a kid.

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.

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.

There are only so many roles as empresses... but I've had a lot of offers to play vampires.

I don't believe beauty exists without suffering-that's just a tourist picture in a travel agency, which isn't beautiful to me.

From the age of 14 I was on the set all the time and worked with a lot of people.

I felt extremely comfortable and at home on the set and actually I did homework about breaking down the scenes and often had shot lists in a rough way, but it was actually extremely spontaneous. Working with David Lynch-he is so spontaneous.

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.

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 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 went on auditions for a movie called Year of the Dragon. I was pretty much fresh off the boat, and I had a little baby fat on me. I was a cute - really cute 22-year-old.

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.

Relatively speaking, I was a lot more naive than kids today.

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.

I worked a year in L.A. That was... a treat.

I wish when I was younger, I took my career more seriously. I wasn't. I was just, like, having a good time.

I wish I could spend a little more time with friends. That's one bad thing, because I'm not so reliable as a friend other than getting me on the phone.

I won't ever encourage this temptress to grow. I don't give her any opportunity in my life, but I'm sure it's there. I understand her.

I wasn't good enough to be a waitress. I was a receptionist and I only took down takeouts. Every day there was some mistake I made.

We were so up high that we were really close to heaven, and that does render greater meaning to life.

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.

My brother is a brilliant artist. His oil paintings are really beautiful. And he was the one that taught me what to see - how to see. Colors, lights. And how lights can be so musical.

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.

The factory that I work with, all the products are on the shelf, they are existing products. I can go and enhance it. The perfume is 60% mine.

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.

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.

I sort of stopped acting for about five or six years. I was at this awkward age. I felt that now that I am no longer young, my acting career is over. And so I sort of put myself in the wine cellar and I aged for like five, six years and now I'm uncorked and it was pretty good. It was the right taste.

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.

I've received e-mails telling me about the protests ... friends who have gone back to work for American firms ... they are very, very worried and a little scared, ... I am a little scared. Every time tension like that builds up, I feel like I am not trusted by the Americans. I'm not trusted by the Chinese. I'm not trusted by anybody.

I very much avoid crowds even today. Crowds scare me. I function much better on a more personal level. I don't function very well on a dinner of more than ten. I can't be myself.

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.

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 wanted to do pre-med. The first semester it really didn't matter because you took a lot of general education requirements. But right after the first semester I kind of knew I wasn't cut out for that. I had very good grades but I somehow wasn't satisfied. Just having good grades and having it all go to medical school didn't make me happy.

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.

You want actors to give you the essence of drama-not only the gift of their instincts and knowledge but the greater gift of themselves. When that happens, it's gold-and when you want to catch that, you don't go through all sorts of fancy camera movements to play director.

Even a year ago I was talking about going to law school. Because the lawyers I know get to meet a lot of different people.

I'm sure I had a certain presence. It just happened. I didn't have too big of a problem with it because my family grounded me very well and I didn't understand what fame is and the corruption that fame could bring. I was too naive. I was very much a kid. I believed that people just loved me.

In China we use the word baptism a lot, it's a very revolutionary word.

I'm angry about stereotypes about Asians, but I'm not bitter about not getting enough roles. I do see myself as being very fortunate, and see the change in the industry.

I'm being more selective. I don't think I've made any sacrifices or anything.

If my publicist says you have to be a certain way, I say, Yeah, okay. That's the way the public likes to perceive me. It's all fine, that's part of the business.

If you don't talk about any commitment or a shared future in three months, I don't think you're sincere.

I'm going back to work in China. Chinese movies are getting very very strong now. I'm going back in December to work on a movie based on a classical novel. I play a woman who loves decadence.

The author wrote the novella based on her friend. So it was a true story, ... When I was reading the novella -- she wrote it in such a visual, well-textured way, that I saw in it a poignantly beautiful film. And that is how my generation in China came of age.

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.

Dailies means every day you have 20 rolls, and here I was with 200 rolls of film.

I submitted the script and they gave me a list of changes to make, and I did not agree with the changes.

I think a good sign is when you don't go to bed with people right away. I think you treasure it more. A lot of people, one date or third date or fourth date, you gotta go to bed. It's silly.

I read a lot. On location that's all I do. I've been reading very many different books. I used to follow writers, and whatever book they wrote, I would go buy right away.

Things had just happened to me, good things and bad things, and I took them.

I am not the best girlfriend or lawyer or the reporter. I am the drama-queen type. You know. So it is somehow in my style, in my upbringing, in the way I look: I need to be the dramatic one.

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.

The beauty in the story is at one with suffering. That is also part of our upbringing - we don't think there could be beauty otherwise. Beauty is the result of having been through an experience all the way through to the end - therefore it has a poignancy. Beauty that is singular always comes from following an experience to the point where you can go no further.

Since age 14, 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.

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 love any opportunity to be able to dance. It's in my blood. I mean, I need to do it as an artist. I need to always do it.

Since my mom is the President of Ballet Hawaii, I'm always in touch with stuff going on.

I danced in a Lifetime film. We shot in Canada and I got to work with a lot of the dancers who do So You Think You Can Dance, Canada.

Acting is actually private.

I take class. I'm always ballet ready. I'm ready to go - got my tights and my shoes.

The lowest budget U.S. films are ten times times better than shooting in Tibet.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I went to the International Ballet competition when I was 15 or 16 and that was the first time I competed. I didn't get very far but it was the first time that I realized what I needed to do to become a dancer. I realized how hard it was.

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.

I miss directing. I see stories in images and music more so than in dialogue.

The young people, they don't knock on the door politely and say "May I come in?" They barge in, they take your seat, and you're obsolete unless you recreate and somehow find grace somewhere else. Another profession may not be like that.

The lowest budget U.S. films are ten times times better than shooting in Tibet.

The mainstream welcomes kung fu films - martial art films, right? So that's one type of Chinese-ness that's welcome.