Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to the 550th episode of the Hollywood

reporters Awards Chattered Podcast.

I'm the host Scott Feinberg and my guest today is a Chinese actress and

director who began her career nearly 50 years ago in Shanghai where she became in her teens an award-winning

megastar likened to Shirley Temple and Elizabeth Taylor. At the height of her

stardom though, she moved away to America, arriving at a time when virtually no Asians were

getting parts of substance in American films. And yet, after essentially

starting from scratch, she helped to shatter that glass ceiling.

Landing leads in numerous big budget productions,

most notably one that took her back to China.

Bernardoucci's 1987 epic, The Last Emperor, which ended up being nominated for and winning nine Oscars, including best picture. Joan Chen.

Over the decades since the Last Emperor, Chen has had a roller coaster of a career with major ups and downs.

She has popped up in numerous interesting projects, among them David Lynch's landmark 1990 to 1991 TV series Twin Peaks, Oliver Stone's 1993 film Heaven and Earth, Ang Lee's 2007 film, Lest Caution, Netflix's 2014 to 2016 TV series Markopolo, and the 2023 FX

limited series, A Murder at the End of the World. She was once described by the San Francisco examiner as

Hollywood's leading Chinese actress and named by People magazine as one of the 50

most beautiful people in the world. But she also nearly quit the business at one point when the best offers

coming her way were for straight to video B movies. Now, however, is perhaps as great a time as ever to be

Joan Chen, who at the age of 63 is experiencing

what one might call a Chenesance.

At the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, she earned some of the best reviews of her career for her

portrayal of an immigrant from Taiwan who once dreamed of being an artist, but

instead wound up raising her two not particularly grateful American kids in Sean Wong's Dede, which was recognized with the U.S. Dramatic

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