Joan Chen Quotes

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

How I was raised is what I am today.

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

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.

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 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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

All teenagers have this desire to somehow run away.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

Acting is actually private.