Nancy Kwan
Nancy Kwan Ka Shen is a Chinese-American actress, philanthropist, and former dancer. She played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian ancestry in major Hollywood film roles. Born in Hong Kong on May 19, 1939, and growing up in Kowloon Tong.
About Nancy Kwan in brief
Nancy Kwan Ka Shen is a Chinese-American actress, philanthropist, and former dancer. She played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian ancestry in major Hollywood film roles. Born in Hong Kong on May 19, 1939, and growing up in Kowloon Tong. Daughter of Kwan Wing Hong, a Cantonese architect and Marquita Scott, a European model of English and Scottish ancestry. In fear of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong during World War II, Wing Hong escaped from Hong Kong to North China with his two children, whom he hid in wicker baskets. They remained in exile in western China for five years until the war ended, after which they returned to Hong Kong and lived in a spacious, contemporary home her father designed. Kwan’s introduction to tai chi sparked a desire to learn ballet. When Kwan was 18, she pursued her dream of becoming a ballet dancer by attending the Royal Ballet School in London. She studied performing arts subjects such as stage make-up, and danced every day for four hours. In 1960, she was asked to screen test to play a character in the prospective film The World of Suzie Wong. Stage producer Ray Stark wanted an Asian actress because slanting the eyes made a white actress look artificial. He also praised her for being an ‘acceptable face’ and ‘being a perfectly formed leggy perfectly formed woman’ Kwan has an older brother, Ka Keung, who became an architect.
Five of her siblings became lawyers. Her father and her stepmother raised her, in addition to her brother and five half-brothers and half-sisters. Kwan owned a pony and passed her summers in resorts in Borneo, Macao, and Japan. Although she had not yet become an actress, there was a “development of authority” upon her arrival in Hollywood. Once her father chauffeured her to the studio by her father’s driver, John Patrick Patrick, the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, to meet the director of Never On Sunday, Robert Altman. She has a son, Ka Shen, and a daughter, Nancy Kwan, who is a director, producer, and director of a children’s television series, “Nancy’s World”, about the life of a Chinese woman in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s. She is married to a man of Chinese descent and has five children, including a son who is an architect and daughter-in-law who became a lawyer. She also has a step-son who is the son of an American-born Chinese woman, whom Kwan called “Mother’”. Kwan is the mother of a daughter and a son-of-Chinese-American woman who is also a film director, who worked on “The Godfather” and “The Descendants”, among other projects. She was married to the father of one of her children, who was also an architect, until his death in 2010.
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This page is based on the article Nancy Kwan published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
