Joan Chen Quotes

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

All teenagers have this desire to somehow run away.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

America and China need to understand each other.

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

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

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.

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.

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

How I was raised is what I am today.

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

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

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.