Childhood & Early Life
Joe Chen was born in Hsinchu, Taiwan on 4th April 1979 into a middle class Taiwanese family. Having been a great fan of national and international TV shows, she dreamt of being an actress during her early teenage years. Adorned with spellbinding beauty and childlike grace, she indulged in learning the nuances of acting while performing for theatre during the middle and high school years.
Other than acting, she has always had passion for writing and reading. She loved poetry and wrote quite a lot of poems during her high school days.
After finishing her education, she entered showbiz through modelling and appeared for some small-time brands and magazines. Simultaneously, she joined the TV industry as an assistant, which helped her to bag a few supporting roles in series such as ‘Lavender’ and ‘My MVP Valentine’. She also did a few hosting stints here and there, but her career seemed to be going nowhere.
She was considered talentless by the people she was working with, but she never gave up and kept auditioning in hopes of a better role that would kick-start her career. The opportunity that she was looking for came in the year 2003, when she starred in ‘100% Senorita’ as the main lead and hence, her story began.
Continue Reading Below
Career
Starring in ‘100% Senorita’ in 2003 turned out to be a life-changing event for Joe. Playing the lead role in the series, she got the chance of a lifetime to showcase her strong acting skills. The romantic comedy drama became the highest rated comedy show in South Korea and launched her career with a bang. The series became quite a success in the neighboring countries as well, and more such lucrative acting offers rained in on Joe.
Since she was good at singing too, she joined the girl group ‘7 Flowers’. Despite their music being fairly popular among the public, the critics weren’t impressed, and neither were the top recording companies in Taiwan.
She focused on her acting career and had another breakthrough in the form of a series named ‘The Prince Who Turns into a Frog’ in 2005. The series broke all the previous rating records for a Taiwanese Idol drama and became the most successful series of its kind in the history of Taiwanese television. In the same year, she also appeared in guest roles in series ‘The Doctor’ and ‘Sugo’. With each of her television appearance, her popularity just kept crossing boundaries.
‘Treasure Hunter’ and ‘Stylish Man’, were two shows in which she took on the job of a host and made appearances in fiction dramas such as ‘A Game About Love’ and ‘Fated to Love You’. The latter came in the year 2008, and once again shattered all the previous records to become the most watched Taiwanese Idol drama of all time. For her role, she won a Huading Award for Best Actress and got nominated for a Golden Bell Award under the same category. The success of the series was so huge that more than 15 Asian countries showed interest in broadcasting it. Talks regarding the show reached as far as the USA, where the show built an audience at a decent pace.
This was the right time for her to explore more international markets and when Chinese TV producers approached her to be featured in their shows, she couldn’t deny as China was a bigger platform for actors than Taiwan. Then she took up this role which would go on to establish her image in the heart and mind of the Chinese. In 2010, she appeared in the series ‘The Girl in Blue’, which happened to be an adaptation of a highly successful online novel. The popularity of the series in China was magical and demand for Joe, the actress, grew further.
The love she got from Chinese audience also got her the leading role in Hong Kong director Barbara Wong’s feature film ‘The Allure of Tears’, which marked the film debut of Joe. In the same year, she also appeared in the series ‘Youthful and Vibrant Zhu Nine Sister’.
Another massive success came her way when she made a comeback to the idol drama genre in 2012 with ‘The Queen of SOP’, a romantic comedy. The critics reviewed it as one of the best TV presentations of the year and the ratings also resonated with the same. And the China-Taiwan co-production eventually went on to become the highest rated series that year.
In 2013, the wuxia drama ‘Swordsman’ was aired and Joe played the role of an anti-heroine in it. Playing such a role for the first time in her career, she was worried about the general response. But as she played the character and portrayed the layers of it with panache, she ended up winning hearts of the public and the Most Popular Actress Award at the Anhui TV Drama Awards.
Carrying forward the success streak she was having in China, she appeared in the fantasy action drama film ‘The Monkey King’, which was an international success and became one of the most successful Chinese films that year. The success was followed by another successful film titled ‘The Continent’.
Continue Reading Below
In 2015, Joe appeared in five back-to-back films and two dramas titled ‘Cruel Romance’ and ‘Destined to Love You’. ‘Cruel Romance’ became a big hit and earned Joe a few awards and nominations for her performance.
In the year 2016, she donned the hat of a TV producer for the first time in her career with the drama ‘Stay with Me’. She also made an appearance in the series as an actor.
Presently, she is busy shooting for her first international film titled ‘Into the Rainbow’, which happens to be a co-production of China and New Zealand. The film narrates the story of two troubled teenage girls whose lives turnaround after witnessing a weird natural phenomenon.
Personal Life
Joe Chen is way too close to her family. Though she has been linked to several of her co-actors during the course of her career, she has maintained that she finds no time to date anyone.
She also says that her friends and family are enough to support her during the difficult phases. Although Wallace Huo has hinted quite a few times that he has dated Joe, there hasn’t been any official confirmation. Her link-up with Wang Kai has also been in news for quite some time.
