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

Acting is actually private.
Joan Chen

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

All teenagers have this desire to somehow run away.
Joan Chen

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.
Joan Chen

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.
Joan Chen

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.
Joan Chen

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.
Joan Chen

How I was raised is what I am today.
Joan Chen

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

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.
Joan Chen

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.
Joan Chen

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

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.
Joan Chen

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.
Joan Chen

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

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

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.
Joan Chen

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

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