Cover Joan Chen received the Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award at the New York Asian Film Festival in July 2026 (Photo: Getty Images)
Joan Chen received the Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award at the New York Asian Film Festival in July 2026 (Photo: Getty Images)
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Celebrated Chinese-American actor Joan Chen, known for ‘The Last Emperor’ and ‘Twin Peaks’, received the Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award at the New York Asian Film Festival last month. She shares how she bridged Chinese and Hollywood cinema and found richer roles later in life
Few actors possess a career quite like Joan Chen. A household name in China before her twenties, she transitioned to Hollywood in the 1980s, becoming one of the rare cross-cultural figures to establish a lasting presence in both Chinese and Western cinema—her achievements predating those of Michelle Yeoh, whose first major international role was a Bond girl in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies; Zhang Ziyi, whose first Hollywood film was the 2001 comedy Rush Hour 2, playing a villain opposite Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker; and Gong Li, who made her Hollywood debut in Memoirs of a Geisha in 2005 (though Zhang Yimou’s 1987 Golden Bear-winning film Red Sorghum, in which she played the lead, arguably first contributed to her global fame).
Chen started her career in the 1970s as a teenager, capturing national adoration with the 1979 classic Little Flower. Her performance as a young guerrilla fighter searching for her family earned her the Best Actress award at the Hundred Flowers Awards—which celebrates mainland Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwan cinema—when she was just 19 years old.
Above Joan Chen at the red carpet of the Hundred Flowers Awards at the National Speed Skating Oval on August 10, 2026 in Beijing (Photo: Getty Images)
Joan Chen at the red carpet of the Hundred Flowers Awards at the National Speed Skating Oval on August 10, 2026 in Beijing (Photo: Getty Images)
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When she moved to Western cinema in the 1980s, she forged an equally successful international path. She was cast in period-defining works such as Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks. Her contemporary works—both as an actor and director—shed light on nuanced social issues, including the immigrant experience in Sean Wang's Dìdi and Xiaodan He’s Montreal, My Beautiful. Her influence and legacy in film are further marked by her distinction as one of the earliest Chinese-born members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
In July, the New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) honoured Chen with the prestigious Star Asia Lifetime Achievement Award, celebrating a four-decade career of creative contribution to the industry.
Yet despite the accolade, Chen, now 65, remains grounded. “It’s great to be celebrated any time in your life,” she says. “Of course I feel honoured. Of course I feel extremely happy. But ultimately these things are not important because the most important thing is that you stay creative. What gives me the greatest pleasure is the process of making something.”
Above Joan Chen in ’Little Flower’ (Photo: IMDB)
Joan Chen in ’Little Flower’ (Photo: IMDB)
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Chen’s path to acting was entirely unplanned. Born in Shanghai to a family of prominent medical professionals—her mother a pharmacologist and neurobiologist, her father a radiologist and hospital dean, and her maternal grandfather an Oxford-educated pharmacologist—she possessed the pedigree for academic success and faced firm expectations to follow in her family’s footsteps. “Acting wasn’t my choice. I was just picked out of high school and began to act,” she says. “Back in those days in China, there wasn’t any freedom for actors to choose their characters. You would be assigned to do whatever you were required to do. I was lucky: I was assigned to be the leading lady in four different films.”
Those roles included her screen debut in Xie Jin’s 1977 film Youth, Hearts for the Motherland (1979),(1979) and Awakening (1981). These prominent roles turned her into one of mainland China’s most beloved young stars.
However, when she arrived in the US in 1981 to study pre-medicine at the State University of New York at New Paltz, pursuing an acting career in Hollywood seemed almost unthinkable. “When I first arrived in the US, I never thought about acting because I didn’t see [Asian actors] on TV,” Chen says. “How does one even begin to do that?”
Above John Lone as Puyi and Joan Chen as Empress Wanrong in the 1987 film ‘The Last Emperor’ (Photo: IMDB)
John Lone as Puyi and Joan Chen as Empress Wanrong in the 1987 film ‘The Last Emperor’ (Photo: IMDB)
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Her entry into the American film industry came purely by chance. At the time, a single talent agency represented nearly every Asian actor in Hollywood. Chen walked into the agency without an appointment. Although reprimanded by the receptionist, the empty office meant an agent agreed to meet her.
She began landing small roles—not for fame, but to pay her bills. “I liked the fact that it paid better than restaurant work that I was doing,” she recalls with a chuckle. “I just thought I could do this to support myself through college. I didn’t think about it as a career. Opportunities were so few compared to today.”
Still, her passion for acting never faded. Attending a Chinese film festival at California State University, Northridge cemented her decision to transfer and study filmmaking at the institution, despite her mother’s disapproval—who even asked Chen: “Do you want to be the prettiest doctor or just another pretty actress?”
Read more: The K-Factor: Daniel Dae Kim’s homecoming and the new era of global culture
Above Joan Chen as Janice Kim, a member of the protagonist’s knitting club, in ‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’ (2026) (Photo: Diyah Pera and Netflix)
Joan Chen as Janice Kim, a member of the protagonist’s knitting club, in ‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’ (2026) (Photo: Diyah Pera and Netflix)
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After a couple of minor roles that she described as “meaningless”, her major international breakthrough came when she was cast as Empress Wanrong in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Oscar-winning epic The Last Emperor (1987) in a stroke of serendipity. While the film brought her global exposure, Hollywood during that era remained fundamentally resistant to Asian leading roles. “The Last Emperor was very successful, but it didn’t really launch my career,” Chen reflects. “It gave me a little better exposure, but time was very, very different.”
Decades later, the landscape of Western cinema is undergoing a noticeable shift. A new generation of Asian-American and Asian diaspora filmmakers—writers and directors who are children of immigrants—are writing nuanced, fully dimensional roles for veteran actors.
Chen is among the actors and filmmakers contributing to this evolution. Frustrated by being typecast in narrow, exoticised roles offered to Asian actresses in Hollywood during the 1990s, she branched into filmmaking with the aim of presenting stories with personal resonance that spotlight Asian experiences in a respectful, nuanced manner.
Above From left: Charlotte Aubin as Camille and Joan Chen as Feng Xia in ’Montreal, My Beautiful’ (Photo: IMDB)
From left: Charlotte Aubin as Camille and Joan Chen as Feng Xia in ’Montreal, My Beautiful’ (Photo: IMDB)
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Her directorial debut Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl, for instance, is an adaptation of Yan Geling’s novella Celestial Bath, which follows a 15-year-old urban girl exiled to the remote Sichuan-Tibet border for manual labour during China’s Cultural Revolution. It is a story that gave Chen a deeply personal connection to her own generation’s experience during China’s Down-to-the-Countryside movement.
Remaining active in front of the camera, she recently starred in Montreal, My Beautiful, which was featured at NYAFF. The movie sees Chen play Feng Xia, a Chinese-Canadian immigrant wife and mother who embarks on a journey of late-in-life self-discovery. Chen felt an immediate kinship with the script. “I felt extremely close to the script because it is an immigrant story,” she says. “This woman and her husband, they’re raising two Canadian kids. Like my husband and I, we are immigrants and we raised two American children.”
Beyond the shared background, the role offered an emotional depth that Chen finds rare for women of her age group. “When young people think about people my age, they think of mothers, grandmothers,” she says. “They would seldom get into their desires, let alone physical desire, their longing, their hunger. This character does have that. It’s a really complex character.”
Above Joan Chen (Photo: Getty Images)
Joan Chen (Photo: Getty Images)
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When evaluating how inclusivity in Hollywood has progressed, Chen emphasises that true representation goes beyond tokenism. “It’s great that today we have so many scriptwriters and directors who are Asian, who are children of immigrants,” she says. “I don’t think just the word ‘inclusivity’ is that meaningful because you do see films made with a rainbow of colours... But they don’t go into the inside of what your humanity is. I think it really takes great filmmakers to have true interest in the humanity of people like us.”
With decades of acting and directing behind her, Chen’s focus remains firmly set on storytelling and creative exploration. She is currently developing a new independent film project as a director, while actively expanding into other artistic mediums.
Having published a successful book in Chinese about her family’s generational history, Chen is preparing a major multidisciplinary art exhibition in Shanghai. Created in collaboration with her artist brother, the installation bridges film, literature and visual arts through video installations, family heirlooms and holograms depicting their ancestral home.
“It is our journey from China to the US and back to China—that nomadic sort of creative spirit—that bridges two different cultures,” Chen says.
Whether directing a film, curating an exhibition or writing, Chen views art as an ongoing necessity. “Creating something from nothing gives me great pleasure,” she says. “And regardless of the genre, I’m always looking for a story to tell.”
Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
