page_title: Nancy Kwan
section_title: Later years
hierarchical_section_title: Nancy Kwan / Biography / Later years
caption_attribution_description: English: Roger Ebert and his wife Chaz Hammel-Smith give the thumbs-ups to Nancy Kwan at the Hawaii International Film Festival on October 20, 2010
context_page_description: Nancy "Ka Shen" Kwan is a Chinese-American actress, philanthropist, and former dancer who played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian ancestry in major Hollywood film roles.
context_section_description: In 1987, Nancy Kwan co-owned the dim sum restaurant Joss. Kwan, producer Ray Stark, and restaurateur and Hong Kong film director Cecile Tang financed the restaurant, located on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood.
  Kwan sporadically records audiobooks. In 1995, Kwan recorded an audiobook for Anchee Min's memoir Red Azalea in what Publishers Weekly called a "coolly understated performance that allows the story's subtleties and unexpected turns to work by themselves". In 2011, she recorded an audiobook for the 1989 memoir When Heaven and Earth Changed Places by Le Ly Hayslip with Jay Wurts. San Francisco Chronicle's Patricia Holt praised Kwan's intonation in her delivery, writing that "Kwan's faint Asian accent and careful pronunciation of Vietnamese words make Hayslip's weaving of her past and present lives a riveting experience".
  In 1993, Kwan played Gussie Yang, a "tough-talking, soft-hearted Hong Kong restaurateur", in the fictional Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story. She played a pivotal role in the film, a character based on Seattle restaurateur and political leader Ruby Chow who hires Bruce Lee as a dishwasher and gives him the funds to open a martial arts school.
  In May 1993, she completed the production of a film about Eurasians, Loose Woman With No Face, which she wrote, directed, and starred. She called the film "a slice of life about Euro-Asians in Los Angeles, and it's something I know about".
  In 1993, Kwan was asked about whether she was confronted with racism as a leading Asian Hollywood actress in the 1960s. Kwan replied, "That was 30 years ago and (prejudice) wasn't such a heavy issue then. I was just in great Broadway productions that were turned into films. I personally never felt any racial problems in Hollywood." In the 1990s, she faced a severe shortage of strong roles. She attributed this to both her age and the movie enterprise's aversion to selecting Asians for non-Asian roles. In earlier years, she was able to play an Italian and a Tahitian.
  In the 1990s, there were more Hollywood films about Asians. Kwan could have capitalized on the trend through a role in the 1993 film The Joy Luck Club. Because the filmmakers refused to excise a line calling The World of Suzie Wong a "...horrible racist film," she passed on the role.
  In November 1993, Kwan co-starred in the two-character play Arthur and Leila about two siblings who struggle with their Chinese identities. It debuted in the Bay Front Theater in Fort Mason, San Francisco, and moved to Los Angeles two weeks later. Variety reviewer Julio Martinez praised Kwan for her ability to "flo[w] easily between haughty sophistication and girlish insecurity".
  In 1994, she lived with her second husband, film distributor David Giler, and her son, Bernie, in a Beverly Hills house. She preserved her "dancer's figure" through the Chinese martial art tai chi she dearly enjoyed and frequent dance sessions. That year, she assumed the role of 52-year-old Martha in Singapore Repertory Theatre's showing of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, an "intense psychological play" by Edward Albee.
  Around 1994, her husband and she produced the feature film Biker Poet. Bernie was the director and an actor in the film.
  In 1996, when he was 33, Kwan's son, Bernie, died after contracting AIDS from his girlfriend whom Kwan had cautioned him to avoid. Four years after his death, poet and actress Amber Tamblyn compiled her debut poetry book Of the Dawn and dedicated it to Pock. Calling him like a "big brother", she noted that she acted in the film Biker Poet with him when she was nine. Tamblyn said he was the "first guy" to convince her to share her poems.
  She has appeared on television commercials even into the 1990s and appeared in "late night infomercials" as the spokesperson for the cosmetic "Oriental Pearl Cream".
  Kwan has been involved in philanthropy for AIDS awareness. In 1997, she published A Celebration of Life – Memories of My Son, a book about her son who died after being infected by HIV. She gave profits from both the book and a movie she created about him to supporting the study of AIDS a
caption: Roger Ebert and his wife Chaz Hammel-Smith gave the thumbs up to Nancy Kwan at the Hawaii International Film Festival on October 20, 2010.
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