Joan Chen


Joan Chen is a Chinese-American actress, film director, screenwriter, and film producer. In China she performed in the 1979 film Little Flower and came to the attention of western audiences for her performance in the 1987 film The Last Emperor. She is also known for her roles in Twin Peaks, Red Rose, White Rose, Saving Face, and The Home Song Stories, and for directing the feature film .

Early life

Chen was born in Shanghai, to a family of pharmacologists. She and her older brother, Chase, were raised during the Cultural Revolution. At the age of 14, Chen was discovered on the school rifle range by Jiang Qing, the wife of leader Mao Zedong and major Chinese Communist Party figure for excelling at marksmanship. This led to her being selected for the Actors' Training Program by the Shanghai Film Studio in 1975, where she was discovered by veteran director Xie Jin who chose her to star in his 1977 film Youth as a deaf mute whose senses are restored by an Army medical team. Chen graduated from high school a year in advance, and at the age of 17 entered Shanghai International Studies University, where she majored in English.

Career

Chen performed alongside Tang Guoqiang in Zhang Zheng's Little Flower in 1979, for which she won the Hundred Flowers Award. Chen portrayed a pre-Maoist revolutionary's daughter, who, reunited with her brother, a wounded Communist soldier, later learned that his doctor was her biological mother. Little Flower was her second film and she soon achieved the status of China's most loved actress; she was dubbed "the Elizabeth Taylor of China" by Time magazine for having achieved stardom while still a teenager.
In addition, Chen was in the 1979 film Hearts for the Motherland. The film directed by Ou Fan and Xing Jitian depicts an overseas Chinese family that returns to China from southeast Asia out of their patriotic feelings but encounter political troubles during the Cultural Revolution. The songs, "I Love You, China" and "High Flies the Petrel", sung by Chen's character, are perennial favorites in China. In 1981, Chen starred in Awakening, directed by Teng Wenji.
At age 20, Chen moved to the United States, where she studied filmmaking at California State University, Northridge.
Her first Hollywood movie was Tai-Pan, filmed on location in China. In 1985 she appeared in the show 'Miami Vice' as May Ying, former wife of Martin "Marty" Castillo and husband to Ma Sek in the episode "Golden Triangle ". She went on to star in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor in 1987 and the David Lynch/Mark Frost television series Twin Peaks as Josie Packard. She starred alongside Rutger Hauer in 1989's The Blood of Heroes, written and directed by David Webb Peoples. In 1993 she co-starred in Oliver Stone's Heaven & Earth. She portrayed two different characters in Clara Law's Temptation of a Monk : a seductive princess of Tang dynasty, and a dangerous temptress. She shaved her head on-screen for the role. The award-winning film was adapted from a novel by Lilian Lee.
In 1994 she co-starred with Steven Seagal in the action-adventure On Deadly Ground; she returned to Shanghai to star in Stanley Kwan's Red Rose, White Rose opposite Winston Chao, and subsequently won a Golden Horse Award and a Hong Kong Film Critics Society Award for her performance. In 1996, she was a member of the jury at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival.
Tired of being cast as an exotic beauty in Hollywood films, Chen moved into directing in 1998 with the critically acclaimed , adapted from the novella Heavenly Bath by her friend Yan Geling. She later directed Autumn in New York, starring Richard Gere and Winona Ryder, in 2000.
In the middle of the 2000s, Chen made a comeback in acting and began to work intensely, alternating between English and Chinese-language roles.
In 2004, she starred in Hou Yong's family saga Jasmine Women, alongside Zhang Ziyi, in which they played multiple roles as daughters and mothers across three generations in Shanghai. She also starred in the Asian American comedy Saving Face as a widowed mother, who is shunned by the Chinese-American community for being pregnant and unwed and has come to live with her lesbian daughter.
In 2005, she appeared in Zhang Yang's family saga Sunflower, as a mother whose husband and son have a troubled father-son relationship over 30 years. She starred in the Asian American independent film Americanese and in Michael Almereyda's Tonight at Noon, the first part of a two part project, scheduled to be released in 2009.
In 2007, Chen was acclaimed for her performance in Tony Ayres' drama The Home Song Stories. She portrayed a glamorous and unstable Chinese nightclub singer who struggles to survive in seventies Australia with her two children. The role earned her four awards including the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actress and the Golden Horse Award for Best Actress. The same year saw her co-starring in two other acclaimed films: Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, opposite Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, and Jiang Wen's The Sun Also Rises, opposite Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, for which she received an Asian Film Award for Best Supporting Actress.
In 2008, she starred alongside Sam Chow in Shi Qi, directed by Joe Chow, as a rural mother of a 17-year-old in eastern Zhejiang province. The same year Joan Chen portrayed in Jia Zhangke's 24 City a factory worker once fancied because she resembled Chen herself in the 1979 film Little Flower, but who missed her chance at love.
She co-starred in Bruce Beresford's 2009 adaptation of the autobiography of dancer Li Cunxin Mao's Last Dancer, along with Wang Shungbao and Kyle MacLachlan.
In 2009, Chen starred alongside Feng Yuanzheng and Liu Jinshan in the Chinese TV series Newcomers to the Middle-Aged, directed by Dou Qi, in which she played a female doctor facing middle-age problems. She also played the part of goddess Guan Yin in the 2010 Chinese TV adaptation of Journey to the West, directed by Cheng Lidong.
In October 2009 Joan Chen was the curator of the first Singapore Sun Film Festival, whose theme was "The Art of Living Well". She selected and curated five films for screening during the festival: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Dead Man Walking, Hannah and Her Sisters, Still Life and Edward Scissorhands.
In 2010, Chen joined the cast of Leehom Wang's directorial debut Lian ai tong gao., Alexi Tan's Color Me Love, Ilkka Järvilaturi's Kiss, His First and veteran acting coach Larry Moss' Relative Insanity. In May 2010, she was set to star and direct one of the three parts of the anthology film Seeing Red.
In 2011, she played Secretary Bishop's girlfriend on the television series Fringe episode "Immortality". Chen was cast as the Yuan empress Chabi in the 2014 American television series Marco Polo. Being somewhat unfamiliar with the Mongols, Chen read The Secret History of the Mongol Queens in order to prepare for the role.

Personal life

Chen was formerly married to actor Jimmy Lau from 1985 to 1990. Chen married her second husband, cardiologist Peter Hui, on January 18, 1992. They have two daughters. They live in San Francisco, California.
During her early years in California, Chen attended California State University, Northridge. In 1989, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. On April 9, 2008, Chen wrote an article entitled "Let the Games Go On" for the Washington Post objecting to the politicization of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Charitable work

In May 2008, Chen appeared alongside James Kyson Lee, Silas Flensted, and Amy Hanaialiʻi Gilliom in a public service announcement for the Banyan Tree Project campaign to stop HIV/AIDS-related stigma in Asian & Pacific Islander communities.
In October 2008, Chen made the cover of Trends Health magazine alongside actresses Ke Lan and Ma Yili to promote the Chinese Pink Ribbon Breast Cancer Prevention campaign.
On January 8, 2010, Chen attended, alongside Nancy Pelosi, Nicole Kidman, and Joe Torre, the ceremony to help Family Violence Prevention Fund break ground on a new center located in the Presidio of San Francisco intended to combat violence against women and children. During the ceremony, Chen performed an excerpt from the documentary play The Thumbprint of Mukhtar Mai.
On January 15, 2010, Chen was set to appear, along with other Asian American personalities, in a series of videos supporting the Center for the Pacific Asian Family.

Filmography

Actress

YearTitleRoleNotes
1984Knight RiderSu-LinEpisode 3.1 Knight of the Drones
1985MacGyverLinEpisode 1.2 The Golden Triangle
1985Miami ViceMay YingEpisode 1.14 Golden Triangle
1989WiseguyMaxine TzuEpisode All or Nothing
1990Twin PeaksJocelyn 'Josie' PackardTV series — Series regular
1992StrangersThe GirlTV movie
1992Shadow of a StrangerVanessaTV movie
1992Nightmare CafeFirst customerEpisode 1.1 Nightmare Cafe
1993Tales from the CryptConnieEpisode 5.4 Food for Thought
1997'Elizabeth WuEpisode 5.15 '
1998The Outer LimitsMajor Dara TalifEpisode 4.24 Phobos Rising
1999In a Class of His OwnLinda ChingTV movie
2009Newcomers to the Middle-Aged
人到中年		Tian Wenjie / 田文洁TV series
2010Journey to the West
西游记		Guan Yin / 观音TV series
2011FringeReikoEpisode 3.13 Immortality
2012Hemingway & GellhornMadame Chiang Kai-shekHBO TV movie
2012Sui Tang Yingxiong
隋唐英雄		Empress Dugu / 独孤后TV series
2013Serangoon RoadPatricia ChengTV series
2013Meng's Palace
海上孟府		Er Jie / 二姐TV series
2014Marco PoloChabiTV series
2017Twin PeaksJosie PackardEpisode: "Part 17"; archive footage
2018Ruyi's Royal Love in the PalaceUla Nara Yixiu

Director

Writer

Producer

Other media

Other recognition