Joan Chen

“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 I was raised is what I am today.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Acting is actually private.”

“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.”