Now She’s a Tough Guy

Joan Chen discovered a whole new side to her personality when she cut off her long hair for her latest movie, the futuristic action-thriller “The Blood of Heroes.”

“I always had long hair,” says the 28-year-old native of Shanghai. “I surprised myself when I cut it. I became more sophisticated. Because you don’t have to fuss about your hair anymore, it makes you a simpler person in the morning--you just wash your hair. There’s nothing else you can do.”

In “Heroes,” Chen plays Kidda, an ambitious young gladiator who travels from village to village playing a violent team sport. The rough-and-tumble part is a far cry from roles as the benevolent concubine in “Tai-Pan” or the drug-addicted Chinese empress in “The Last Emperor.”

“I play a female ‘Rambo’-type person in the movie,” she says, laughing. “I take that back, I don’t want to have that comparison. But I usually played victims and this part is more loose physically and much stronger as a person. It’s nice to get a chance to really move about and play a different part.”

The actress also soon will be seen in yet another challenging part in David Lynch’s anticipated ABC series, “Twin Peaks,” which premieres April 8. “I had to do it because of David Lynch,” she says. “I think my character is good and bad and mysterious. She married into the town and inherited half of it and she’s guarding her property with her life. She’s a bit like a film noir femme fatale .”

Before coming to the United States in 1981 to study at Cal State Northridge, Chen was one of China’s biggest film stars.

Though she went back to China to make “The Last Emperor,” she hadn’t starred in a Chinese production for nearly a decade. After last year’s uprising, Chen returned to make a miniseries for Chinese TV.

“What happened in China last year was disappointing,” she says, “but things seem to be changing. It’s still hopeful.”