The Many Lives of Tsai Chin : Pioneering Chinese-Born Actress Stars in Part of East West Players’ Trilogy

Tsai Chin, one of the few Asian actors of her generation to make it big in Western theater and film, has appeared in dramas, comedies, musicals, TV shows, movies and more since the early 1960s. But nothing she’s done has been quite as dramatic as her own epic story--a life with both tragedy and triumph in its acts.

The daughter of China’s greatest Peking Opera actor, Zhou Xinfang, Chin left her native land as a teenager. She did not know it at the time, but she was never to see her parents again--they were killed in the Cultural Revolution.

Chin, however, went on to do her father’s legacy proud. She not only became a star, but also broke new ground for Asian actors in the Western world.

And through the decades, her desire to see Asian actors accorded the respect they’re due hasn’t diminished. “When I started I was kind of a pioneer, so it is up to people like me,” says Chin, seated in an office at East West Players last weekend.

“Things have improved, maybe not as fast as one would have them, but one has to give credit,” she continues. “Still, it does depend on the more mature actors to try to cross over as much as possible.”

Best known to today’s audiences for her acclaimed performance as Auntie Lindo in the movie “The Joy Luck Club,” Chin, who moved to L.A. two years ago, was last seen on a Los Angeles stage in 1995’s “The Woman Warrior” at the Doolittle.

She appears next in “Half Lives,” part of Chay Yew’s “Whitelands” trilogy, which opens at East West Players today. The story of an Asian American family and its struggle with assimilation, “Half Lives” will play in repertory with “Porcelain” and “A Language of Their Own.”

One of the skills Chin has honed over the years is an ability to keep herself in work. “I don’t want to fall into the trap of actors just waiting for the telephone to ring,” she says. “I’ve always been able to create my own jobs, and that is one of the secrets.

“It’s been tough, but very interesting,” she continues. “I have to do things. So I did a lot of things.”

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Many of those things are chronicled in her 1990 autobiography, “Daughter of Shanghai,” which was reissued in paperback in 1994. Born in 1937 Shanghai, she was, at first, raised on the road, as her father toured China.

Arriving in England in the 1950s, Chin soon became the first Chinese to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, where her classmates included Glenda Jackson. “I didn’t know it was very hard to get in,” she says. “That’s the nice thing about being young and stupid.”

Following her studies, Chin made her breakthrough in the West End production of “The World of Suzie Wong.” Ironically though, it meant passing up another great opportunity.

“I was first cast in ‘Flower Drum Song,’ then ‘Suzie Wong,’ and I had to choose,” Chin says. “For an Asian actress, how many times do you have two hits [to choose between]?”

Through two early marriages and sundry significant others (including a year with critic Kenneth Tynan), Chin made her career the priority. She went on to act in numerous European films and on BBC television, most notably in the series “That Was the Week That Was,” with David Frost and others.

In time, however, her luck turned. After learning of her parents’ torture and death in China, she became despondent, and Chin was nearly broke when she fled England for the United States--and a change--in the 1970s. For a while, she thought she would never act again, but then Chin landed with the Cambridge Ensemble in Boston. While in New England, she earned a master’s degree in drama at Tufts University, before returning to London.

When China opened up in 1981, Chin traveled to her native country for the first time since the 1950s. “I went to China to teach and direct,” she says. “That’s the beginning of [getting my] Chinese connection back. [Since then], I go there often to work.”

Back in London, Chin resumed her work as an actress and began writing her autobiography, a process that helped exorcise some of her ghosts. “Before I wrote the book, I thought of my mother every day,” she says. “I’d go to the dentist and think, ‘Oh my God, she got her teeth kicked in.’ ”

Chin appeared with Anthony Hopkins in “M. Butterfly” in London in 1989. Then, in 1991, she caused a stir by assaying the title role in L.A.-based playwright Henry Ong’s “Madame Mao’s Memories.”

“I collected everything about [Madame Mao] because I wanted to know why [she did what she did],” Chin says. “And then, when the opportunity came to play her, [I did] so that I could get into her skin and see where she was at.

“I started to understand her much more and I started to think about my mother a bit less,” she continues. “I got [Madame Mao] out of my system.”

The actress’ performance in the 1993 film “The Joy Luck Club” was widely hailed (the New York Times’ Janet Maslin wrote that “the film is virtually stolen by Tsai Chin”). That attention prompted Chin to move to L.A.

And here she continues--just as she did as a girl in China--to make ambitious plans for herself. “I want to do a PhD now, on my father,” Chin says. “I have to do something with my head. I can’t just sit around.”

Then, too, there is always the possibility that the world of Tsai Chin will make it to the big screen or stage. “I always say that when I’m on my 100th birthday and just about to die, somebody’s going to make it into a musical, like ‘Flower Drum Song,’ ” she jokes. “Who knows?”

* “Whitelands,” East West Players, 4424 Santa Monica Blvd. “Porcelain,” Wednesday, 8 p.m.; “A Language of Their Own,” Thursday, 8 p.m.; “Half Lives,” Friday, 8 p.m. Three-play marathon, Saturday-Sunday, 2, 4 and 8 p.m. (except April 20). Through April 21. $20 per play or $50 for the marathon. Box dinners available. (213) 660-0366.