Joan Chen: 'Little Flower' in full bloom
At 51 Joan Chen is reaping the benefits of maturity and experience in both her private life and as an actress and director, writes Mathew Scott
Joan Chen can remember with complete clarity the night that she decided to give the acting game away. It was on April 26, 1991, and Chen had gathered her friends together in Los Angeles to celebrate a 30th birthday that should have allowed her time to reflect on - and celebrate - a career that had already seen the actress conquer the film worlds of China and of Hollywood.
But as she looked around the room, she started to wonder. "When I turned 30, I suddenly thought my life was over," says Chen. "I had a huge party. There were all these flowers and for me it felt like a funeral. I said, 'I have to leave LA. That's it, my life is done'."
I love my boring little life. So this acting is like it's the middle of the night and I put my mask on and go out and be someone else
After a decade in the US, it had all come down to the roles Chen was being offered. "When I was still acting in LA there were a few images accepted by the industry," Chen explains. "It wasn't about you as a woman, it was about you as a spice or a colour, an exotic element. So when I was young and beautiful, I was the sexy vixen. Then I got old and I'm a dragon woman, evil, a tiger woman, where there's only one aspect to you."
The act had become very tired, very quickly, Chen explains. But what turned things around was her family - meeting her husband, cardiologist Peter Hui and, later, the arrival of daughters Angela (in 1998) and Audrey (2001). These days, Chen divides her time between running their home in San Francisco and nurturing a creative career that has continued to blossom during the past decade.
"At this stage of my life, my family is everything. I am able to travel and explore because I have a very stable home," says the 51-year-old. "Filmmaking is just my vacation away from cooking and cleaning, and playing with my kids. From being a wife and mother. My life is pretty secure and stable. I love my boring little life. So this acting is like it's the middle of the night and I put my mask on and go out and be someone else."
The reason the conversation has turned to such matters is the role that Chen has been working on during the past year. We are meeting in Singapore as the HBO network begins the publicity push for its first co-production with Australia's ABC TV. is a 10-part series set in the Singapore of the 1960s, with Chen starring as a woman forced to take over a detective agency after the murder of her husband. The series is set for screening across the region in the third quarter of the year.
