Gemma Chan

Chan in 2014, photo by Starfrenzy/Bigstock.com

Place of Birth: Southwark, London, England, U.K.

Date of Birth: 29 November, 1982

Ethnicity: Chinese

Gemma Chan is a British film, television, and theatre actress, and fashion model. She has appeared in the films Transformers: The Last Knight, Crazy Rich Asians, Let Them All Talk, and Eternals, among others.

Her father grew up in Hong Kong. Her mainland Chinese mother emigrated from Communist China, before the Cultural Revolution; she moved via Hong Kong to Greenock, Scotland, where she grew up.

Gemma has said of her maternal grandparents:

They managed to escape Communist China just before the Cultural Revolution, after the Great Leap Forward, which had been a disaster. They felt Communist China had no future. They’d seen terrible things – people starving to death – and thought, ‘This is not where we want to raise our children.’ They were a nurse and a teacher… They managed to get to Hong Kong. My mother said she remembers the night they left: they couldn’t tell anyone they were going, because everyone was encouraged to inform on their neighbours, their friends.

A picture of Gemma with her father can be seen here. A picture of Gemma with her mother can be seen here.

6 Responses

  1. jonasbttencourt says:

    Hum, interesting this quote of her talking about her grandparents, wonder if she would stand by her own words today, since she is starring a big movie now, and Hollywood depends so much of China right now, but i read that Eternals was banned from there anyway… She is beautiful, she looks like she could have some european admixture, idk, her facial bone structure is a bit different from avarage chinese people from what i know.

    • Oaken05 says:

      Hollywood doesn’t ‘depend’ on China so much as they want to be able to expand into China, and the CCP wants to protect and expand their own movie industry.

      • jonasbttencourt says:

        The CCP straight up blackmails american studios with crazy demands in order to allow the movies in China, the domestic growth of american movies is getting lower and lower, so they are very dependent on the giant chinese market. The John Cena case was a great example of how much influence China has over the western market now. What a disgrace.

        • NOTREALLY says:

          I have to agree with this. just look at how China literally modifies and sometimes even rearranges western films altogheter to fit their national narratives, and nobody from Hollywood bats an eye, they need them.
          Back on Gemma Chan I respectfully disagree, I think she looks perfectly Chinese without admixture, she’s just gorgeous, not saying you’re doing it deliberately but a lot of people tend to associate beauty with euro admixture

          • jonasbttencourt says:

            Im not saying she does not look chinese, i just said some details in her face are a bit european-like, it can be Just a coincidence, problably caused by a specific mixture of east asian genes, if her father has ancestry from the more far west regions of China, and her mother’s ancestry is on the east side of the country, it’s possible something other than pure Han Chinese.

  2. Akwaba says:

    So she is half Hong Kong Chinese and half Mainland (Han) Chinese ?

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