Joan Chen Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

How I was raised is what I am today.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

All teenagers have this desire to somehow run away.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

America and China need to understand each other.

Acting is actually private.

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.