Quotes from Joan Chen

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 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.

Acting is actually private.

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!

All teenagers have this desire to somehow run away.

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.

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.

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.

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

How I was raised is what I am today.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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.