Acting for me is not a bad habit like smoking that I must make an effort to quit. I love acting; I love directing.
Acting is actually private.
All Asian parents are into your children having a respectable, decent stable job. Acting was unimaginable to my parents.
All teenagers have this desire to somehow run away.
And in Chinese language, there is a saying about children and mother. It's like, uh, you're 10 fingers to your heart, as if there is distance there, but if you chop your hand, it hurts like hell. This is the connection. And there is not another bond that's stronger. This is the strongest bond ever!
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.
Beauty is the result of having been through an experience all the way through to the end - therefore it has a poignancy. Beauty that is singular always comes from following an experience to the point where you can go no further.
Black people are doing a lot better lately. They're getting a lot more better roles and they have fought for a long time.
Both my parents are very hard-working, very caring, studious people. They take their profession very very seriously. Especially in China, there is not much of a reward other than saving lives. So I have a very very high respect for the profession of medicine. That could be a subconscious reason.
Dailies means every day you have 20 rolls, and here I was with 200 rolls of film.
Even a year ago I was talking about going to law school. Because the lawyers I know get to meet a lot of different people.
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.
From the age of 14 I was on the set all the time and worked with a lot of people.
How do you explain certain physical qualities that somehow sell on screen? You're born with it... Certain people are just more watchable, and I was more watchable, but I don't think I understood acting or drama very well when I was a kid.
How I was raised is what I am today.
I could have played Demi Moore's roles in a few projects, you know, like the same age group. I saw certain movies and said, Oh, they would have never imagined even to interview me, but I could have done this. Obviously, my being Asian is still a problem.
I did somehow manage to get into a college in China that trains diplomats when I was 17, one year before my peers could go, which is very very difficult. I was very proud I did.
I don't find intimate scenes more difficult than other scenes.
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.
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.
I never went on an audition - when they were really looking at everybody.
I read a lot. On location that's all I do. I've been reading very many different books. I used to follow writers, and whatever book they wrote, I would go buy right away.
I think a good sign is when you don't go to bed with people right away. I think you treasure it more. A lot of people, one date or third date or fourth date, you gotta go to bed. It's silly.
I think what's the most important thing for any mother is whether or not my children are going to be happy. My interpretation of that really is your fierce and savage love for your children. All motherly love is really without reason and logic. It's totally savage and that's an act out of love.
I very much avoid crowds even today. Crowds scare me. I function much better on a more personal level. I don't function very well on a dinner of more than ten. I can't be myself.
I was always so anxious to do the right thing, politically righteous, socially acceptable. It wouldn't have been good. It wouldn't have suited my personality because there is so much complication I didn't understand as a kid.
I was frustrated. I was doing some bad movies, movies that I knew going in were not going to be great.
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 wish I could spend a little more time with friends. That's one bad thing, because I'm not so reliable as a friend other than getting me on the phone.
I wish when I was younger, I took my career more seriously. I wasn't. I was just, like, having a good time.
I won't ever encourage this temptress to grow. I don't give her any opportunity in my life, but I'm sure it's there. I understand her.
I won't waste people's time. I won't bitch. I won't complain because I understand how hard it is by being a director. So it's all good.
I worked a year in L.A. That was... a treat.
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.
I'm angry about stereotypes about Asians, but I'm not bitter about not getting enough roles. I do see myself as being very fortunate, and see the change in the industry.
I'm being more selective. I don't think I've made any sacrifices or anything.
I'm going back to work in China. Chinese movies are getting very very strong now. I'm going back in December to work on a movie based on a classical novel. I play a woman who loves decadence.
I'm sure I had a certain presence. It just happened. I didn't have too big of a problem with it because my family grounded me very well and I didn't understand what fame is and the corruption that fame could bring. I was too naive. I was very much a kid. I believed that people just loved me.
If my publicist says you have to be a certain way, I say, Yeah, okay. That's the way the public likes to perceive me. It's all fine, that's part of the business.
If you don't talk about any commitment or a shared future in three months, I don't think you're sincere.
If you know how to do a job very well, you keep doing it.
In China we use the word baptism a lot, it's a very revolutionary word.
My brother is a brilliant artist. His oil paintings are really beautiful. And he was the one that taught me what to see - how to see. Colors, lights. And how lights can be so musical.
My fairy-tale life ended the moment I wanted to apply for a passport.
Now I have a family. I have a real home, a place I really want to come back to. I get really homesick before because there wasn't much to be missed.
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.
Relatively speaking, I was a lot more naive than kids today.
The acting in China is very stylized and dramatic, and I was just me.
The army was a desirable place to be. It offered a more disciplined life than the countryside.
The difference between me and American-born actors is that I came here with the expectation of not being treated fairly.
The factory that I work with, all the products are on the shelf, they are existing products. I can go and enhance it. The perfume is 60% mine.
The lowest budget U.S. films are ten times times better than shooting in Tibet.
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.
There are a few stories that I like, but I don't know how to approach them because there's no part for me-just books I read.
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.
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!
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.
Things had just happened to me, good things and bad things, and I took them.
To be an Asian, to be a minority, not to see ourselves as always me the minority, the victim, you the dominant culture. It's a shift of paradigm. Once you see things differently, you gain power. All of a sudden there is enlightenment.
We were so up high that we were really close to heaven, and that does render greater meaning to life.
When I was younger, I struggled against, you know, I don't want to be pigeon-holed. And I, you know - Basically, now you want to be pigeon-holed. It's your niche.
When you feel so strongly about something and other people feel equally strongly, you have to feel stronger about it in order to succeed.
You have to say, I will wither if I don't do it, I'll die if I don't do it. It has to be that big of a determination, that much of a need.
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