Background

Joan Chen was born on April 26, 1961, in Shanghai, China. She has an elder brother, Chase.

Education

Joan Chen was educated in China at the Shanghai International Studies University. She came to the United States to attend college in 1981, first at the State University of New York at New Paltz, later at California State University, Northridge.

Career

Joan Chen's career began with the slightest of coincidences: while she was taking part in a marksmanship drill as a teenager, she was spotted by the wife of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, who selected her to attend film school and become an actress. She tasted fame early in her life when she made her film debut in Xie Jin's Youth (1976) at age 14. She soon enrolled in the prestigious Shanghai Foreign Language Institute while making a couple more feature films, including Zhang Zheng's Little Flower (1979), which eventually won her a Best Actress Prize at the Hundred Flowers Awards (the Mainland Chinese equivalent of the Oscars). Having reached the pinnacle of fame in her own country, Chen made the unusual step to leave China - not for Hong Kong as many later Chinese stars such as Gong Li and Jet Li did - but for the United States. While studying at California State University in Northridge, she landed a small role in Wayne Wang's Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart (1985), a gentle portrait of Chinese-American family life.

In true Hollywood style, she was summarily cast as May-May in the adventure-epic Tai-Pan (1986) after being spotted in the Lorimar parking lot. Though it was savaged by critics and bombed at the box-office, Tai-Pan did allow Chen to segue into her breakthrough role. As Empress Wan Jung in Bernardo Bertolucci's Oscar-award winning The Last Emperor (1987), Chen brilliantly played a woman whose love and life are tragically destroyed by China's rigidly patriarchal culture and the machinations of fate. Hollywood roles being notoriously hard to land for Asian and Asian-American actors, Chen's newfound fame did not immediately lead to better movie offers. She appeared in such low-budget fare as The Blood of Heroes (1989) before she attracted public attention again as Josie Packard in David Lynch's TV series Twin Peaks. In 1993, she played a Vietnamese mother who suffers for a lifetime in a country at war in Oliver Stone's Heaven and Earth.

That same year, she returned to Asia to make a pair of critically successful films. She played a supernatural temptress in Clara Law's Temptation of a Monk (1993), a historical epic with the sweep and visual flare of a Sergio Leone film with a pronounced erotic edge. The role was a brave one to tackle as it not only featured Chen as the movie's clear villain, but it also featuring an unusually graphic sex scene for a mainstream Chinese film. In Stanley Kwan's Red Rose, White Rose (1994), which was nominated for Berlin's Golden Bear, Chen played another deliciously evil vixen opposite Winston Chao. For her effort, she won a Best Actress Golden Horse award, Taiwan's equivalent of the Oscar. Her return to America was marked by another succession of subpar flicks, including On Deadly Ground (1994) and Judge Dredd (1995). Chen also co-produced and starred in The Wild Side (1995), a lesbian romantic thriller in which she played opposite a still-in-the-closet Anne Heche.

In 1998, Chen made her directorial debut with Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, a lyrical, harrowing tale about the loss of innocence and respect during the tumult of the Chinese cultural revolution. Featuring sumptuous cinematography and subtle, remarkably assured direction, Xiu Xiu won armfuls of international prizes, including a virtual sweep of the Golden Horse awards and a nomination for a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. In 1999, Chen climbed back into the director's chair and began production of Autumn in New York, starring Richard Gere and Winona Ryder.

She is also an actress in films, including Jasmine Women (2004), Saving Face (2004), Sunflower (2005), The Home Song Stories (2007), The Sun Also Rises (2007), 24 City (2008), Mao's Last Dancer (2009), Love in Disguise (2010), 1911 (2011), Sheep Without a Shepherd (2019), and many more.

Achievements

• Joan Chen came to mainstream attention after appearing in the 1987 movie The Last Emperor and is also known for her roles in Red Rose, White Rose, Twin Peaks, and The Home Song Stories. As a director, she is known for directing the feature flick Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl. Time Magazine named her as the "Elizabeth Taylor" of China. She was chosen by Goldsea Asian American Daily as one of the "100 Most Inspiring Asian Americans of All Time."

Works

More photos

• book

  • What's Cooking?

    (A funny, mouth-watering, and deeply moving vision of 21st...)

    2000
  • The Blood of Heroes

    (The film features a sport that you're not likely to see o...)

    1989
  • Goodbye My Love 1986
  • Precious Find 1996
  • Purple Storm 1999

• movie

  • On Deadly Ground

    (Steven Seagal directs and stars in this action-packed sto...)

    1994
  • Heaven and Earth

    (The true story of Le Ly, a young girl living in Central V...)

    1993
  • Ava

    (Ava (Jessica Chastain) is a deadly assassin who works for...)

    2020
  • Tai Pan

    (Set in China during the 19th century, Dirk Struan is the ...)

    1986
  • Judge Dredd

    (Sylvester Stallone stars as a top cop in an ultra-violent...)

    1995
  • The Hunted

    (A businessman runs for his life from a deadly group of ni...)

    1995
  • White Frog

    (Twilight's Booboo Stewart plays a neglected teen trying t...)

    2012
  • The Last Emperor

    (The 1987 Best Picture Oscar winner is a dazzling saga abo...)

    1987
  • Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

    (In the town of Twin Peaks, everyone has their secrets-but...)

    1992
  • Sheep Without A Shepherd

    (Lee and his wife Jade run a small company in Thailand. Th...)

    2019
  • Golden Gate

    (A young F.B.I. agent unexpectedly falls in love with the ...)

    1994
  • Xiao Hua (Little Flower) 1979
  • Night Stalker 1987
  • Wedlock 1991
  • The Wild Side 1995
  • Saving Face 2004
  • Sunflower 2005
  • The Home Song Stories 2007
  • The Sun Also Rises 2007
  • Mao's Last Dancer 2009
  • 1911 2011

Views

In 2008 Joan Chen appeared alongside James Kyson and Amy Hanaiali'i Gilliom in a public service announcement for the Banyan Tree Project campaign to stop HIV/AIDS-related stigma in Asian & Pacific Islander communities. In the same year, she was a spokeswoman for the Chinese Pink Ribbon Breast Cancer Prevention campaign. In 2010 she attended the ceremony for the Family Violence Prevention Fund's International Center, in the Presidio of San Francisco, which is the world's first international center aimed at eliminating violence against women and children.

She is an Ambassador for the environmental organization WildAid and appeared in a public service announcement for the protection of pythons for WildAid and the Discovery Channel. In 2012 Joan Chen participated in a charity auction in support of the "First Panteleimon Medical Foundation," which implements programs for the treatment of hydrocephalus and epilepsy in children in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Quotations: "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!"

"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."

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

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

"How I was raised is what I am today."

Personality

A multi-lingual and multi-talented actress of international repute, Joan Chen's hobbies could be described as community service, acting, and travel.

Quotes from others about the person

• David Lynch: "She's the best thing from China since pasta - and much more beautiful."

Connections

From 1985 to 1990, Joan Chen was married to actor Jimmy Lau. She then married Peter Hui, a cardiologist, in January 1992. They have two daughters, Angela Frances Hui, Wen Shan Hui.

Spouse:

Peter Hui

Friend:

Geling Yan

ex-spouse:

Jimmy Lau

Daughter:

Angela Frances Hui

Daughter:

Wen Shan Hui

Brother:

Chase Chen

Friend:

Amy Ruth Tan

Friend:

Wayne Wang

colleague:

Kyle MacLachlan

Kyle MacLachlan and Joan Chen both appeared in Twin Peaks television series.

References

• Contemporary Authors
  2004