Jacqui Chan on that sex scene from The Crown, being a Chinese actress in the 1960s and why she’s still in demand
Chan, who played Gwennie in The World of Suzie Wong, dated the future Lord Snowdon, appeared in Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor, and worked with ‘yellowed up’ white actors, is busier than ever as she nears 80
Longevity is hard to achieve in most professions and acting is probably one of the most difficult. For a Chinese actress in the West the feat is even harder, for all that the runaway box office success of Crazy Rich Asians has shone a precious spotlight on Chinese faces in the film industry.
Take a bow, Jacqueline Chan. Nearly six decades after her breakout role as the sassy Gwennie in the 1960 classic The World of Suzie Wong, the dancer and actress has never been in higher demand.
“Getting older, I have three things against me,” she says over a coffee in the Peter Jones department store in Chelsea, West London. “I’m a woman, there are fewer parts; I’m Chinese, there are even fewer parts; and my age. Yet for the last three years I seem to have done rather well.”
Chan has just finished a theatrical run in Allelujah by acclaimed British playwright Alan Bennett. It is a musical about a hospital geriatric ward facing closure. Chan, sporting a grey curly wig, plays a mute patient who for most of the play just bangs a tray but shines in the dance scenes.
A couple of years ago she had a role in the Netflix series Marco Polo. Last year she played Madame Cai, a blind masseuse in the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Snow in Midsummer, a modern version of the third century Chinese classic The Injustice to Dou E.
She is also playing a role in director Emilie Upczak’s drama about the trafficking of Chinese women to the Caribbean, Moving Parts, shot in Chan’s native Trinidad, and which is currently doing the festival circuit.