Acting for me is not a bad habit like smoking that I must make an effort to quit. I love acting; I love directing.
The lowest budget U.S. films are ten times times better (than shooting in Tibet).
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.
I danced in a Lifetime film. We shot in Canada and I got to work with a lot of the dancers who do So You Think You Can Dance, Canada.
I don't find intimate scenes more difficult than other scenes.
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.
The beauty in the story is at one with suffering. That is also part of our upbringing - we don't think there could be beauty otherwise. 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.
Historically and culturally the Mongol women were very strong, they contributed as much as the men to their society, their community. Other than upper body strength, I think they were equal to the men. To compensate for the lesser upper body strength they had to be smarter, they had to think more, they had to consider things more carefully.
I was frustrated. I was doing some bad movies, movies that I knew going in were not going to be great.
If you have the right costumes you feel more confident as the character, they really help you act.
If the costumes are wrong, you feel awful in them and it lessens your acting.
I would say it's like a meditative process, to have everything done for you every morning.
In my life I do look up to actors, at my age I ask myself, who else is playing interesting parts at my age which is very difficult for a female actor. On top of it, being a minority, having come from China makes it harder.
I miss directing. I see stories in images and music more so than in dialogue.
The young people, they don't knock on the door politely and say "May I come in?" They barge in, they take your seat, and you're obsolete unless you recreate and somehow find grace somewhere else. Another profession may not be like that.
It's a very obsessive profession that you need to stay obsessed to get anywhere, and it's very easy for us to get obsessed and then nothing else matters. I was reading Somerset Maugham's novella, Moon and Sixpense, about this artist based on Gauguin's life. It was so beautifully written. You must be first rate because second rate you might not survive. If you're an accountant, you'll survive second rate. If you chance it big, you may not get anywhere.
It's the sacrifice I'm not willing to make right now to leave my children because I felt it wasn't only my choice.
I went to the International Ballet competition when I was 15 or 16 and that was the first time I competed. I didn't get very far but it was the first time that I realized what I needed to do to become a dancer. I realized how hard it was.
I remember watching Swan Lake and everybody looking exactly the same, but being able to relate because they were the only company I had ever seen even on video that had Asian dancers. The Asian community in Hawaii is actually almost as dominant as the Caucasian community. I thought "I can relate to that company because they look like people that I see every day." They weren't all little stick-thin Russian ballerinas.
Not very many companies go through Hawaii on their way to anywhere. San Francisco Ballet was the only company I remember, and Bolshoi, coming through Hawaii when I was younger.
I grew up in Honolulu. It's not the ballet cultural mecca by any stretch of the imagination. People are much more familiar with hula than they are with ballet.
I love any opportunity to be able to dance. It's in my blood. I mean, I need to do it as an artist. I need to always do it.
America and China need to understand each other.
