Joan Chen Quotes

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

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.

Historically and culturally the Mongol women were very strong, they contributed as much as the men to their society, their community. Other than upper body strength, I think they were equal to the men. To compensate for the lesser upper body strength they had to be smarter, they had to think more, they had to consider things more carefully.

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.

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.

Acting is actually private.

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.

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

All teenagers have this desire to somehow run away.

My fairy-tale life ended the moment I wanted to apply for a passport.

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.

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.

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!

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.

America and China need to understand each other.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

How I was raised is what I am today.

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.

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.

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

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 never went on an audition - when they were really looking at everybody.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 was frustrated. I was doing some bad movies, movies that I knew going in were not going to be great.

If you have the right costumes you feel more confident as the character, they really help you act.

If the costumes are wrong, you feel awful in them and it lessens your acting.

I would say it's like a meditative process, to have everything done for you every morning.

In my life I do look up to actors, at my age I ask myself, who else is playing interesting parts at my age which is very difficult for a female actor. On top of it, being a minority, having come from China makes it harder.

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.

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 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.