At 18, Joan Chen was already a star in China. A few years later she started again from scratch in the United States. From Twin Peaks to The Last Emperor, and then behind the camera, she has built one of the most distinctive careers of her generation, which she continues in 2026 with a role in French.
A Chinese film star
Joan Chen was born in Shanghai on 26 April 1961. Spotted at 14, she trained at the Shanghai Film Studio’s acting school and made her first film, Youth, in 1977. Two years later her role in Little Flower won her the Hundred Flowers Award for Best Actress, one of Chinese cinema’s best-loved prizes. She became one of the most famous actresses in the country.
Starting over in America
At around 20 she moved to the United States to study at California State University, Northridge. There she had to rebuild her career in a second language, in an industry that offered few parts to Asian actresses. After Tai-Pan (1986), Bernardo Bertolucci cast her as Empress Wanrong in The Last Emperor (1987), which went on to win nine Oscars.
A wider audience then discovered her in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, as the enigmatic Josie Packard. She worked with Oliver Stone on Heaven & Earth (1993) and regularly returned to Asia: Red Rose White Rose (1994), made in Taiwan, won her a Golden Horse Award for Best Actress.
Moving behind the camera
In 1998 she directed her first feature, Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl, about a teenager sent to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, a period she lived through as a child. Hollywood then hired her to direct Autumn in New York (2000), starring Richard Gere and Winona Ryder. She later directed English (2018) and Hero (2022).
She has kept acting too: in Saving Face (2004), in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (2007), and in Australia in The Home Song Stories (2007), which won her the Australian Film Institute’s best actress award. In 2024 her role as the mother in Sean Wang’s Dìdi earned her an Independent Spirit Award nomination.
2026: still learning
In January 2026, the trailer for Xiaodan He’s Montréal, ma belle showed Joan Chen in an unexpected part: a married woman who falls in love with another woman in Montreal. She learned French for the role. In May, NYU Shanghai invited her to give the address at its tenth commencement, describing her as an actor, director and author.
A US citizen since 1989, Joan Chen has long spoken up for better representation of Asian Americans in Hollywood. Her own path between two countries and two film industries makes the point well: an actress who refused to be confined to one kind of role, or to one country.
© Photo: ReverendPoppins - CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
