Nancy Kwan 6/6 | The Most Inspiring Asian Americans of All Time | Asian American Personalities

Asian American Profiles

SUZIE WONG REVISITED

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     After the success of Flower Drum Song, Kwan found herself in the driver's seat. "I would run away when I didn't want to work," she recalls. "When you're that age you have so many choices, you don't always want to work. They couldn't fire me." No doubt at that point she could have done much better for herself had she been released from the contract. She was to end up buying her way out of it before the end of its seven-year term.

     Her Eurasian features allowed her to play parts for Italians, Native Americans or Hispanics as well as Asians. During the remainder of the 60s she acted in a string of forgettable films like Arrivaderci, Baby and Fate is the Hunter. Under the contract her salary increased every six months to as much as $3,000 a week (the equivalent of about $27,000 in today's terms).

     While in her early 20s Kwan married Austrian hotelier Peter Brock whom she had met while filming a movie she has trouble recalling. "I was really young," she says. "I just went off and got married. There was no courtship. That really set [my parents] back." Her son was born a couple of years later. The marriage didn't have a chance with Kwan's filming schedule constantly taking her away from Austria. "It wasn't fair to Peter or to myself," says Kwan. By the mid-60s she asked for a divorce and got custody of their son. A couple of years later there was another brief marriage to an American. In the early 70s she returned to Hong Kong. One reason may have been her father's lingering cancer which took his life in 1973.

     Kwan spent the 70s in Hong Kong, completely away from the Hollywood scene. She acted in some locally produced films for Southeast Asian distribution except during three years when she was labeled a communist for having traveled to China and barred from acting. She formed a production company called Take One in partnership with an Australian producer and directed commercials. She liked directing, but discovered that she didn't enjoy meetings with bankers and other business aspects.

     Her father's death left a vacuum in her life. "I still miss him," says Kwan. "He was a big influence in my life." She doesn't say that she was his favorite. "He loved the girls. He loved his children." After his death her stepmother moved to England to be with the youngest boys who were still in school.

     At the end of 1979 Kwan returned to the U.S. because "I had done my thing in Hong Kong." She also wanted her son to go to high school in the States so he would have more options for college. "Hong Kong only has Hong Kong U If you don't get in, that's it."

     "The first thing my son said when we came here was 'Mom, I look just like everybody else.'" That surprised me. I had never thought about it. It shows that even as parents we're not really sensitive to anyone else." Kwan bought a house in Westwood and sent her son to West L.A.'s University High. "It was culture shock for him," says Kwan. "Nobody threw things at the teacher in Hong Kong." Her brown-haired, light-eyed son is now 24 and living out on his own. "He's in the business," she says. "He does stunts, acts, writes. He's writing two scripts."

     Kwan found it hard for an over-40 Asian actress to land character roles, a plight she shares with others of her generation like friend Nobu McCarthy. She was also handicapped by her earlier success. "I don't have that [need] to prove myself. I have a passion to do good roles but luckily I don't have to do it for economic reasons. I'm not a big spender and I don't need a lot of frills."

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Kwan managed to play some strong roles, mostly in "low-budget films that don't even get to theaters. They go straight to video." One recent role was in a revenge story called Walking the Edge. Kwan played a woman who kills a lot of people to avenge her husband's murder. She and her significant other raised the money and produced it for under a million. They even made a profit thanks to strong foreign sales.

About four years ago Kwan moved to a house in Sherman Oaks where she currently lives with her significant other about whom she is secretive. All she will reveal about him is that she met him after coming back from Hong Kong and that he is a producer. "I'm not used to people asking intimate details," she says. "Certain things you have to keep for yourself."