My fairy-tale life ended the moment I wanted to apply for a passport.

Meaning of the quote

Joan Chen, a famous Chinese actress, is saying that her life was like a fairy tale, but it all changed when she tried to get a passport. This tells us that her life was wonderful and magical, like a fairy tale, but getting a passport was the moment when everything changed and her fairy-tale life came to an end.

About Joan Chen

Joan Chen is a renowned Chinese-American actress and film director. She rose to fame in China with her breakout role in the 1979 film ‘Little Flower’ and later gained international recognition for her performance in the award-winning film ‘The Last Emperor’. Chen has had a diverse career, starring in TV shows like ‘Twin Peaks’ and movies such as ‘Saving Face’ and ‘The Home Song Stories’, as well as directing the feature film ‘Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl’.

More about the author

More quotes from Joan Chen

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.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

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.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

If you know how to do a job very well, you keep doing it.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

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.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

The lowest budget U.S. films are ten times times better than shooting in Tibet.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

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.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

The difference between me and American-born actors is that I came here with the expectation of not being treated fairly.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

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.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

I don’t find intimate scenes more difficult than other scenes.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

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.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

Acting is actually private.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

When you feel so strongly about something and other people feel equally strongly, you have to feel stronger about it in order to succeed.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

Acting for me is not a bad habit like smoking that I must make an effort to quit. I love acting; I love directing.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

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.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

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.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

How I was raised is what I am today.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

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.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

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.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

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.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

I never went on an audition – when they were really looking at everybody.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

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!

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

My fairy-tale life ended the moment I wanted to apply for a passport.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

All teenagers have this desire to somehow run away.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and 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.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director

All Asian parents are into your children having a respectable, decent stable job. Acting was unimaginable to my parents.

Joan Chen

Chinese-American actress and director