115 Quotes by Joan Chen

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.

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.

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!

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.

There are only so many roles as empresses... but I've had a lot of offers to play vampires.

Only when you poeticize something does it become universal. I believe when your experience is more crystallized through distance and time, you're more able to poeticize something.

I did somehow manage to get into a college in China that trains diplomats when I was 17, one year before my peers could go, which is very very difficult. I was very proud I did.

I don't believe beauty exists without suffering-that's just a tourist picture in a travel agency, which isn't beautiful to me.