Name in English: Joan Chen Name in Chinese: 陈冲 [ 陳冲 ] Name in Pinyin: Chén Chōng Gender: Female Birth Year: 1961 Birth Place: Shanghai, China Current location: San Francisco, California Philanthropy: Yes Professions: Actress , Director Education: Shanghai International Studies University, English ; Shanghai International Studies University; State University of New York - New Paltz; Bachelor of Art, Radio/Television/Film , California State University - Northridge , 1992 Awards: 2012, Distinguished Alumni Award, California State University - Northridge; 2010, IF Best Actress, Inside Film; 2008, Best Supporting Actress, Asian Film Award; 2008, Best Supporting Actress, China Film Media Award; 2008, Best Actress, Film Critics Circle of Australia; 2007, AFI Best Lead Actress Award, Australian Film Institute; 2007, IF Best Actress, Inside Film; 2007, Best Actress, Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival ; 2005, Lifetime Achievement Award, San Diego Asian Film Festival; 1998, Best Director, Golden Horse Award; 1995, Best Actress, Hong Kong Film Award; 1995, Best Actress, Hong Kong Film Critics Society; 1 994, Best Actress, Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival ; 1980, Best Actress, Hundred Flowers Award ; The 130 Most Inspiring Asian Americans of All Time, Goldsea.com Contribution: Joan Chen (born as Chen Chong) was raised during an especially tumultuous time in Chinese history. Her parents were both pharmacologists that were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 70s as many educated people were at the time . They were both arrested and sent to the countryside for "reeducation" in communis t ideals, leaving Chen , who was just seven at the time, and her elder brother , to be raised by relatives. She also said, "My grandfather, who studied medicine in England, committed suicide after he was wrongly accused of being a counterrevolutionary and a foreign spy." As Chen recounted losing their parents wasn't the only change they experienced , " We had some other people came to live in the house because they said we had too big a house. People moved in, they literally moved all your furniture upstairs and stayed downstairs and their children basically took our space. But kids don't know, we don't know hatred. We'd make friends with these people so there is some kind of a support system there. " Her mother was only allowed to return about five years late r when Joan was around 12 years old. Her father would only return years after that . Joan credited the experience with making her a stronger person that was better able to deal with the challenges of moving to the United States later in her life, "I think it makes me strong, it makes me understand that things happen to a person. Many unexpecte d things happen. You walk out and a beam could hit your head. I think all this helped me when I moved here. Relatively speaking, I was a lot more naive than kids today. It was a very difficult move and all this toughening up when I was little helped." Iro nically her break came when she noticed on the firing range for her exceptional marksmanship during her communist youth paramilitary training . J iang Qing, the wife of Mao Zedong, and one of the prime instigators of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution , wa s a former Shanghai film actress. She was always on the lookout for talent to star in the idealized communist musicals, films, and performances that were the sole forms of entertainment allowed in China at the time. 1 All traditional forms of Chinese enter tainment , such as Beijing opera, as well as Western ones that might have competed against these communist performances , were persecuted and suppressed as either unwanted expression s of the traditionalist past that had no place in the New China , or of corru pt foreign influences. Chen was sent to the Actors' Training Program of the Shanghai Film Studio in 1975 when she was just 14 years old. She started appearing in films the next year. By 1977, s he was selected for the lead role of the movie, Qīngchūn, by the acclaimed director Xie Jin. Although the film was made in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Cultural Revolution after the death of Chairman Mao and the fall of Jiang Qing and the Gan g of Four from power, the movie is stereotypical of the communist idealist film genre of that era. A deaf mute, played by Chen, is cured through surgery and joins the army but because of her previous infirmity is unable to cope with even the simplest duti es. This role led to increasingly more important and noticed jobs as a film actress , most notably in the film, Xi ǎ o Huā, in 1979 for which she won the prestigious Best Actress Award at the Hundred Flowers Award, the Chinese equivalence of the American Aca demy Award . Joan Chen was touted as a model communist youth and became a superstar in China at that time . This real life role she found the most difficult to handle saying, "I was getting older and things were changing and I sort of felt that I don't hav e privacy and there were certain things I had to do because I was an example for the youth. I had to behave a certain way and not dress pretty and not hang out with boys, you know, all these pure qualities I must have and I didn't want to have any more." In the meantime she graduated from the Shanghai Film Studio training program and entered the prestigious Shanghai International Studies University with a major in English at the age of 17, a year before her peers became eligible to attend. But her studies were continually interrupted when she was ordered to take various film roles by the government . Meanwhile her parents had immigrated to the United States after winning a fellowship to do research at the Sloan Kettering Institute in New York Ci ty and were urging her to get educated in the United States. The hardest struggle of her young life then started when she applied for a passport. "It's like a learning process of how to do things and I did it all wrong and it took me more than six months. I just we nt to all the ministries and cried to all the ministers and I said I've worked since I was 14, and now I just wanted to get a good education. I didn't want any money, I didn't want anything else. And nobody sympathized with me, so I was crying. They just s aid, 'We have educated you and you have earned this position and this is your best age to work and we don't want you to leave.'" Despite the reluctance of the government to let a "national treasure" leave China she finally obtained a passport and began pr e - med studies at New York University in 1981 . "I wanted to do pre - med. The first semester it really didn't matter because you took a lot of general education requirements. But right after the first semester I kind of knew I wasn't cut out for that. I had very good grades but I somehow wasn't satisfied. Just having good grades and having it all go to medical school didn't make me happy." She received a phone call from Professor Paul Chow at California State University - Northridge. He was putting on a C hinese film festival and two of Chen's films were being shown so he wanted to invite her to attend. She met so many enthusiastic Chinese students and local community members in Northridge that she transferred in the school and began learning how to direct in drama and film. She finally graduated in 1992. Acting wasn't in her mind at the time and she also considered going to law school. To make ends meet she even worked as a restaurant receptionist but admitted that she made so many mistakes that she was n't able to become a waitress. "The work wasn't hard. The hard part was that the manager kept telling everybody, "This is the best actress from China." I felt a little strange. If people didn't say anything about it, it seemed fine. People kept saying it, and I felt, Hmm, is this bad for the image of China? I mean, for the most loved actress from China to be working in a restaurant. I felt bad for China." 2 Hearing about her plight a classmate who worked as a stuntwoman suggested that Chen find a talent agent. She had a series of minor roles from 1983 onwards in TV series like Miami Vice, MacGyver, and Knight Rider. She also had a minor role in Dim Sum: A L ittle Bit of Heart directed by her friend, Wayne Wang , in 1985. Auditioning for roles was an unfamiliar and uncomfortable process for her though. She walked away from one a udition without even trying out and was on her way to her car in the Lorimar Studios parking lot when Dino De Laurentiis, the movie producer, pursued her and handed her his card. That led to her being cast as the lead actress in the critically panned movi e, Tai - Pan in 1986. It was her first Western movie role but earned her a nomination for the Golden Raspberry Award, a parody of the Academy Award for the worst in film. She said about the role, "Even with the best of intentions, Mei - Mei [in Tai Pan] was very very very stereotypical. Not that the film - makers wanted to degrade her. They were just ignorant." The negative attention though earned her the lead role as the Empress of China in the blockbuster movie, The Last Emperor in 1987.