Joan Chen Thinking Quotations

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.