Grace Chan Was Hurt by Criticism of Her Acting
Since winning Miss Hong Kong 2013, Grace Chan (陳凱琳) quickly rose through the ranks and became TVB’s most promoted actress. However, with quick fame also came the criticisms. Fortunately, coupled with her positive personality and determination, Grace looked past the negative comments.
In regards to being called a “vase”, Grace expressed, “I try to do my best in each and every series. I would communicate with the producers and actors so I can gain experience. Of course, I have a lot of room for improvement. I can’t be scared to think about how people will see me after each drama airs. But at the very least, as long as I’ve done everything I could for each series, then I think it’s okay. I hope that viewers will slowly change their minds about me.”
Receiving backlash on her acting skills, Grace said the worst comment she received was when someone told her, “I turn off the TV whenever you’re on”. She admitted that she was fairly hurt by the words since she worked hard on her series. Grace’s biggest concern was not wanting her parents to feel sad after reading the reports. Choosing to ignore the negative comments, Grace will use actions to showcase her improvement instead.
Although Grace’s acting has been met with criticism, she took the opportunity to praise her boyfriend, Kevin Cheng‘s (鄭嘉穎) excellent acting skills. She expressed, “Kevin really loves acting. In Destination Nowhere <迷>, despite playing a gentle and demure man, he was still very charming. He is great with any role. When he is filming, he is very professional and focused. I admire him a lot.”
Source: stheadline.net
This article is written by Su for JayneStars.com.
Every interview about her is kevin…PAthetic!
@jessehsuan IKR?!? Lol. Reporters will always ask but she doesn’t have to drag him in so much. A simple, yea he supports me and encourages me to do the best, would have suffice. Then go back to talk about the event or herself or something. Of course you think your own bf is a great actor. Duh.
@jjwong that’s because other than Kevin, she is nothing.
Wonder what the judges saw in her to let her be Miss HK. At least Sisley is improving. But grace Chan makes my hair stand watching her. I refuse to watch 张保仔 again because of her…otherwise I re watched several Ruco’s dramas.
@janet72 i’ll agree that sisley has somehow improved exponentially in a short time and 张保仔 was not watchable (even with ruco’s stellar performace). but in defense of grace (at least in regards to Miss Hk), it was a beauty pageant, and in terms of beauty, grace was miles ahead of everyone that year (actually maybe even since sonija kwok)
@janet72 Though I agree that Grace hasn’t improved in acting, I agree with @rucofan1100 that she was the better choice for MHK. She had a different look then and more than the average HK-girls. Who could’ve thunk she’s all shell and pretty to look at without substance/acting to back it now after years xD
I like her comments about herself with Kevin and if it is a performance, it is her best performance. But I do feel those comments are genuine, the love is genuine.
But her acting has not improved mainly because TVB does not give her room to improve. She is promoted much too fast, too soon and too eager and so however beautiful her personality is, if she is inadequate as an actor, her inadequacies shows. Her comments about her own inadequacies which she sees not as an inadequacy but viewers’ inability to see her improvement is irritating. Whilst I applaud honesty, I dislike her arrogance in this regard. Maybe the translation is lost somewhere, she can’t be that blind or indifferent to negative comments and see negative comments as just negative. She should embrace the negative and just say I will do better so that when I improve, viewers will see me in that regard.
I think what she means is that the comments hurt more because she actually tried really hard, but the efforts didnt pay off.
Unfortunately that is part of showbiz, and it is the audiences right to demand good acting. She’ll just have to try harder.
@megamiaow
She should go into a different line of work as she doesn’t have what it takes to be a good actress.
@msxie0714 Not fair to say that coz “ther bao” can’t act too previously but she has improved very much after given the opportunities to act in tvb dramas after dramas. So have to give her the chance. moreover she can’t speak the cantonese lingo too well.
@megamiaow She would garner sympathy, forgiving and understanding if she says what you said. Your spin shows humbleness and that she recognized her weaknrss and continued to improve. The way she answered, however, shows her arrogant. Counting the things she had done (e.g. talked to producer and the likes) is like whining, well hey I done all I can so if you don’t think I do well then it’s your (audience) fault. It’s good not letting the negative get to you, but uses still to improve upon and reflect instead of just ignoring them. Maybe it’s just lpst in translation…
@jjwong I agree. If Grace is truly serious about improving her acting, then actually show us rather than sitting there whining about it and saying how hurt she is. Sisley showed us by actually taking acting lessons (and from none other than someone like Anthony Wong, who is a brilliant actor) – and obviously it’s paying off because we are actually seeing her improve. While I don’t doubt that Grace is being honest, she still comes off as being arrogant – like oh well, I tried my best so if you don’t like it, too bad (though I guess we should be grateful that she didn’t take the Wong Jing route and bash the audience as being idiotic and having bad taste for not liking her acting, lol). That’s definitely not the right attitude to have when you’re a newbie and have no real talent or experience to boast of.
Speaking of newbies and improvement — I really appreciate what veterans such as Gallen Lo and Eddie Cheung said in interviews recently about how fortunate they were to have entered the industry (back in the1980s) during a time when there were a lot of senior actors who were willing to take them under their wing and mentor them. Outside of acting class, a lot of what they learned came from the veteran actors/actresses they worked with during filming, many of whom would give them advice and tips on how to do their scenes better. More importantly though, the younger generation back then was more humble and more willing to accept seniors’ advice – they took the opportunity to work with these veterans as a way for them to improve. Nowadays, TVB lacks veterans first of all, so it’s essentially “newbies leading newbies”, but attitude-wise, today’s generation of artists are more self-centered. I’ve actually read interviews from several veteran artists who have talked about trying to give advice to newbies, but are met with a “you’re outdated, what do you know about today’s acting environment and why should I listen to you” attitude…so of course the veterans are no longer inclined to mentor or teach newbies anymore (I wouldn’t either if I were in their shoes — who would want to get constantly slapped in the face by the people they are trying to help?)
@llwy12 I didn’t know about Sisley taking lessons on the side. Good on her. Now I’m inclined to re-pick up series with Kenneth Ma and her to see how well she has improved. (I stopped toward the end of eps 1 lol). I saw a short clip of her in the ghost movie directed by Nick Cheung and thought she was pretty decent.
New generation/attitude is a whole new can of worms. Something I don’t want to open at the moment, lol. Though I will say that new gen with new attitude is influenced/set by society and preset from the previous/older gen. Neither gens are blameless but neither party has a full 100% accountable.
@jjwong Haha…I actually wouldn’t go so far as to say that I would pick up one of Sisley’s series to watch on my own accord, as she is definitely NOT an actress I would turn on the TV for. However if given the choice between her series and Grace Chan’s (you know, like if I were stuck on a deserted island and the only choice of things to watch were between 2 series with the two of them as the stars, lol), I would definitely choose Sisley over Grace. In the little that I saw of Sisley’s performances the past year or so, I already know that she improved, so I’m not inclined to watch any more of her series to see if she keeps it up, lol…for her own sake though (and the sake of those who support her), hopefully she stays on this path and does keep up the improvement.
@llwy12 So I did xD It ran in the background as I crafted heh. The plot is horrendous. Typical everything falls in place and sets up to make the lead extraordinary. Seriously, KM is just another psychologist, no better or worse than Vivien. His character is boring. So is Sisley’s character; though she did indeed improve. She has more controlled over her voice and expression. Her delivery is still bland af though. Not counting a yawn-inspired character. She needs to work on presence. I’m not talking about being loud and standing out like that. She just doesn’t have this on-screen oomph. She kinda blends in the background like a water color. Don’t ask me how she can work on it since if I know how to, I would’ve become an actress myself lol. Hopefully she’ll continue to take more acting classes and find that “click.”
Like you, I rather see her than Grace Chan atm.
She’s always whining how she deserves more credit for her acting. Girl, you have to earn it.
@tiffany if she wants to gain viewers’ liking, she has to work on her lack of skills and be humble. Otherwise, please disappear completely.
lol she must be referring to anthony wong “i turn off the tv when you’re on” but yea her performance in that pirate show was just so bad! (loved how everyone was prepared to dump on tony before it aired, but after its debut all criticism was against her) but she’s just so pretty and i do believe she has the potential to be great (expressive face/voice, good cantonese). too bad her idea of great acting is kevin cheng though…
@rucofan1100 Tony was bad, she was worse
@funnlim maybe it was because i had the absolute lowest of expectations for tony that i didnt mind his performance? never for a second did i believe he was an actual pirate (and probably the biggest example of miscasting in tvb history), but tony has that whole cruising-on-charisma thing (a la bosco wong) going for him that makes him bearable
@funnlim the recent drama ‘married but available’ with tony hung is not bad.
viewers are entitled to see quality acting and not whining. why else would we watch a drama? but the problem with grace chan is, she thinks she has put in a lot of effort…but at the rate she goes, she is pulling everyone’s efforts down the drain. i pity the actors/actresses cast in the drama with her.
@janet72 Agree wholeheartedly on viewers’ entitlement to see quality acting, especially in the leading roles.
Sisley Choi was criticized as much as Grace was back then, anyone remembers? But what does she do, she doesn’t whine and improves her acting. It makes me go from turning off my TV every time I see Sisley to actually enjoy her performance in Mind Hunter. You can see actual improvement from Sisley’s expression to her voice control. I can’t say the same about Grace.
In this line of work, you can’t avoid criticism. If you whine about how the audience doesn’t appreciate your hard work while you make them cringe left and right, then girl, this field is not for you. Just follow Sisley, she sucks, people complain. She tries hard to improve and people will eventually love her. Use your action instead of your mouth. Grace’s so called “action” is telling report how hard she works instead of working hard for real.
Anyone getting really sick of her news? It’s always about the same thing.
I agree so much with what everyone has said here.
First of all, maybe people don’t take you seriously because you drag Kevin into every interview. Some reporters aren’t even asking about Kevin anymore (shocking!!), but she still somehow has to drag him back in. There’s nothing wrong with your relationship, but it’s hard for people to take you seriously as an actress when they are asking you about your work and you either a) whine or b) defer to gushing about your boyfriend AGAIN. Make the interview about YOU! She’s always pushing the “I’m a whitewashed Chinese girl!” narrative to excuse some of her actions, but most actresses and singers in the Western entertainment industry are very against being asked about their relationships in an interview about them.
As for her “hard work”, I pretty much echo everyone else’s opinions here. Hard work =/= results, unfortunately. That’s reality. You can work as hard as you want in medical school, but if you just aren’t good enough, you will get kicked out. No patient will put their lives in your hands just because you are “hard working”. I know it’s bit of an extreme example, but my point is that she can’t expect everyone to love her just because she’s working hard. The “results” for entertainer is audience. Just because she “works hard” doesn’t mean everyone should love her if they don’t think she’s good enough. Probably the most irritating part is that she is ALWAYS saying that she’s working hard and essentially blaming the audiences for not liking her, rather than just being humble/shutting up about it in front of reporters and working on her acting skills. Also her acting still sucks.
Man, I ranted a lot. Sorry, I just can’t handle people who whine instead of work (in real life too) and I guess this just triggered me. I quite like Sisley despite her negative rumors, because of the way she approaches things like work.
@melia880 Agree. It gets irritated whenever actors/actresses or their fans whine about how much hard work they have put in yet viewers don’t give them the chance or don’t recognize their efforts. It’s like they are the only ones working hard. A toilet cleaner earning much lesser than a leading actress is also working hard daily so what makes her so special that we have to be overlook her consistently bad acting since the beginning?
She has a gorgeous face. (Perhaps not everyone here would agree.) Unfortunately there is something about her which is just plain annoying. I wonder if that could be fixed over time, if not, her show biz career might be doomed….
I believe if Tvb gives her more chances she will definitely be better. As you guys are talking about Sisley now, she improved bcoz she has got around 5 series per year and it didnt happen to Grace.
@alicesky Sisley’s improvement has nothing to do with TVB giving her more opportunities. She is improving because she is serious about her career and so took it upon herself to take acting lessons outside of TVB. Things like learning how to control your voice (which is something Sisley was criticized for initially) and paying attention to the use of proper facial expressions are not things you can learn merely from filming a lot of series. These types of acting techniques are most effectively taught in acting class setting where the students can practice over and over again to get it right and get the benefit of immediate feedback from the professionals (I.e the teachers) without bogging down actual productions.
If Grace were to actually take steps to improve her acting (such as enrolling in acting classes on her own accord like Sisley), then maybe people will take her more seriously. Until then, she needs to stop whining about audiences not appreciating her “hard work”.
@llwy12 I agree. Sisley went from obnoxious and terrible in her first three dramas to already quite bearable in the next one. The change was too drastic for it to have just been an epiphany or people’s opinions. I also read that she took classes (and didn’t try and show it off too) and humbly tried concrete ways to improve her acting. And if it IS because she read people’s opinions and took them seriously… well then, good on her! Grace can learn a thing or two!
@melia880 Yup! There’s a huge difference between taking in people’s criticisms and brushing them off as nonsense (which is essentially what Grace did) versus taking the criticisms as opportunity to self-reflect and thereby turn those criticisms into motivation to improve (which is what Sisley did). I still don’t like Sisley all that much and her acting is still not where it needs to be, but I have more respect for her than I do for Grace.
Grace definitely has alot of learning to do and she better do it quickly if she wants to stay in showbiz (in HK that is). And the first lesson — even before learning how to act — is how to be humble. It’s not that difficult — all she has to do is open her eyes and actually “look at” the world around her outside of Kevin. If all she can see is herself and her boyfriend, then she’s better off just marrying Kevin and retiring from the industry so she can put all of us audiences out of our misery.
Why are you guys telling Grace wha she should and shouldn’t do? If Grace reads this, she could fakely change her future answers to the reporters in interviews to make people think she stops whining and be more humble.
@rainbow28 she can fake her answers but she is a professional at whining. reporters love her because she is turbo mouth. having kevin cheng who is a veteran in entertainment should teach her how to handle the pesky reporters, but she doesn’t seem to have learnt anything.
@rainbow28 Um, because as the audience, we are the consumers of the entertainment that these companies and their artists provide — without our support (whether in the form of monetary contribution or other means), TVB would not be able to exist and these artists would not even have careers. In other words, we (as in the audiences) are essentially the ones keeping Grace’s career alive, so we of course have every right to criticize when what we are getting is not what we “paid for”.
And honestly, Grace can change her answers all she wants, but at the end of the day, talk is cheap. She will continue to get criticized because the fact of the matter is that — as much as TVB would like people to think otherwise — audiences are not stupid. If she does not back up her “talk” with concrete action, audiences will be able to see the lack of improvement in her performances.
grace chan is a professional at whining. she doesn’t have a life of her own and if she wants to be taken seriously as an actress, work on it. work with veterans.
sisley has more shows because she is improving and doesn’t whine. but we don’t want to see grace chan because we cringe when we see her acting.
It seems that she is blaming us for not recognizing her hard work and whatever non-existing improvement she claimed to have achieved because we are too blinded by our prejudice against her.
If she is taking a minor role with lesser screen time in all her series, she can take a longer time to improve but even a supporting actress cannot take forever to improve, let alone a leading actress. How long does she expect her probation period to be? A decade?
Rather than insisting how much efforts she has tried and whinning how she has given her best yet viewers do not appreciate her, the fact that her best is definitely not producing results, she needs to do something more than what she is doing now. If she can, stop taking leading roles. Not all HK beauty queens have stayed forever as leading actresses in TVB, her probation is over so she has to step down to take on smaller roles. If for some reason that TVB adores her too much to “downgrade” her, then, like what some of the above netizens’ suggest, do something more to improve acting, don’t poison us further. Shouldn’t she or TVB be responsible to us viewers? How long do they expect us to put up with this?
And start self-reflection. It’s true that no one is universally adored but when most do not like the acting, it’s really not because we are blind or biased. No one cares if her drama serial is only meant for TVB and Kevin to watch but we care because her participation affects the quality of the production that us, viewers, are watching.
I did enjoy watching her in the series about trainee barristers (sorry, can’t remember what it was called). The subdued and slightly moody role there seemed to suit her (or at least it did then) and she didn’t appear annoying. It kind of went downhill from there.
I don’t like her acting at all…I think Sisley is a better actress. When I see Grace I don’t even watch the episodes – I think TVB over promoted her until I get so sick of seeing her face all the time – on the flyers..Don’t like to watch Kevin either.
@ladybug9 sisley was good in that drama with Lawrence Ng. She makes an effort to improve. She doesn’t need to tell viewers she has worked very hard. We can see the improvement.
Grace Chan is only good at whining. As viewers we know when the actor/actress makes us cringe. Kevin Cheng is not fantastic but he did portray a charming 八爷 in ‘Scarlet Heart’. I was gaga over him.
It’s Grace Chan’s fault that we do not appreciate her acting. If she can act well, she can impress viewers even as a maid but if she can’t….then even giving her the role of an empress will make us puke.
quit whining girl and face the fact the your acting is definitely bad!!!!! I bet the reason she keeps brining you her BF is cause she wants all the attention if it wasnt that there dating the spot light wouldnt be shining on her as much
She should stop acting for a few years and go to acting school .
@hannah she should stop acting FOR GOOD. get married and go back to Canada.
@janet72 HAHA Second that
Maybe if she’s willing to not always look perfectly pretty in the dramas then her acting will improve lol. But no seriously. Since we’re comparing her with Sisley, I have to mention that Sisley really doesn’t mind sacrificing her look for work. Priscilla Wong and Grace always look so neat and pretty to every single hair so that’s the only thing they focus on, and that’s the only thing we see done well by them.
I so wanna tell her, I will not even switch on the TV if she is on it!
I so want to watch the Pirate show starring Ruco but I had to stay away for fear of wincing throughout
@conan2209 i second that!!! i have rewatched several of Ruco’s dramas but just refused to watch 张保仔 because she literally screams from episode 1 to the end.
Hey Grace,
You know how I watched Captain of Destiny?
I skipped all your scenes!
I don’t understand how ppl compare Priscilla with Grace bc Grace shouldn’t even be considered an actress. At least Priscilla is good at cry scenes.
Moon Lau and Sisley are both better than Grace
@bubbles23 I doubt she cares, prob just going to go whining and then talk about Kevin again….
@jessehsuan is right, pathetic
@bubbles23 Moon is good…i like her in ‘fist within 4 walls’ pairing with philip. Sisley is improving. Priscilla is MANY times better than Grace and Sisley. I think the judges must have been blind to choose Grace as Miss HK.
If Grace cannot take criticism, she should leave the industry, especially since she is not receptive to the many viewers’ opinion of her.