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Opening
Kiều Chinh (born 1939 in Vietnam) is a legendary actress best known for her role in The Joy Luck Club. Kieu Chinh began her acting career in Vietnam with a starring role in 1957. She soon became one of Vietnam's best-known personalities. In the 1960s, in addition to Vietnamese films, she also appeared in several American productions. Kieu Chinh also produced a war epic Nguoi Tinh Khong Chan Dung (Faceless Lover) (1970), which later would be remastered and shown in the U.S. at the 2003 Vietnamese International Film Festival.

In 1975, while Kieu Chinh was on the set in Singapore, the North Vietnamese army overran Saigon. Kieu Chinh left for the U.S. where she resumed her acting career in a 1977 episode of the television show M*A*S*H loosely based on her life story.

Kieu Chinh subsequently acted in feature films as well as TV-movies. Her best known role was as Suyuan, one of the women in Wayne Wang's The Joy Luck Club (1993). In 2005, Kieu Chinh starred in Journey from the Fall, an epic feature film tracing a Vietnamese family through the aftermath of the fall of Saigon, the re-education camp, the boat people experience, and thel difficulties of settling in the U.S.

Together with journalist Terry Anderson, Kieu Chinh co-founded the Vietnam Children's Fund, which has built schools in Vietnam attended by more than 12,000 students.

In 1996, a documentary based on her life, Kieu Chinh: A Journey Home by Patrick Perez, won an Emmy.

Early life
Nguyễn Thị Chinh was born on September 3, 1937 in Hanoi. She is the youngest child of Ms. Thi An Nguyen (Nguyễn Thị An) and Mr. Cuu Nguyen (Nguyễn Cửu), a minister in the French colonial government. When Chinh was 6, during World War II, her mother and newborn brother were killed when their hospital was struck by an Allied bombing raid targeting Empire of Japan troops in Hanoi during the Japanese occupation of French Indochina. When northern Vietnam suffered a famine in 1945, her family moved to the country to her grandfather's home in order to survive. During her childhood years, Chinh lived with her father and siblings. She learned English, French, piano, and her father often took her to see cinemas in Hanoi. Having been exposed to art from an early age, Chinh affirmed that her father was the most important person in her life.

After the older sister got married and settled in France, the 1954 cease-fire accord was signed in Geneva, dividing Vietnam into two parts: the communists occupied the north, and the Republic of Vietnam ruled the south. Taking advantage of the 100-day period when, in accordance with the French-Vietnamese armistice, residents of Northern Vietnam were still freely permitted to go to the South, Chinh's father decided to move to Saigon with his two remaining children. However, one night before their departure, Chinh's older brother, Lan Nguyen (Nguyễn Lân), ran away to join the North Vietnamese Communist forces. In an urgent situation, a few days later, Chinh and Mr. Cuu planned to leave their home and head south. But when she boarded the plane, her father pushed her inside and told her to stay with family friends. He would find his son and promise to reunite with her later. Neither Chinh nor her father knew that was the last time they would see each other.

Mr. Cuu entrusted his youngest daughter to a close friend on the same flight. Since then, Chinh has lived with Mr. Do's family, waiting for the day to reunite with her father and brother. However, she could not receive any news about them, so she had to stay with her benefactor's family. At the age of 18, she married Mr. Do's second son, Mr. Nang Te Nguyen (Nguyễn Năng Tế), and officially became the daughter-in-law of the Buddhist family.

1955–1974: Early work and breakthrough
Kieu Chinh said she had never thought of acting because cinema came to her by chance.

One day in 1956 Kiều Chinh was walking near the Hôtel Continental, when a young man approached her and asked her to go to a roadside café to meet someone. Then he introduced that person as a famous director named Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Mankiewicz said that Chinh suited a fictional role he was going to film in Saigon. He suggested she take the script of The Quiet American. However, after pressure from her family, who were reluctant to allow her, Kiều Chinh had to decline that opportunity. Politician Bùi Diễm invited Kiều Chinh to play the lead role in the first project of his studio - Tân Việt Films. Her character, which her family agreed to, was a Buddhist nun. So Chinh began her acting career in South Vietnam, starting with a starring role in The Bells of Thien Mu Temple (1957).

Her film roles included Operation C.I.A. (1965) and The Joy Luck Club (1993). She is also a president, co-founder, and co-chair of the Vietnam Children's Fund.

In the 1960s, in addition to Vietnamese films, she also appeared in several American productions including A Yank in Viet-Nam (1964) and Operation C.I.A. (1965), the latter opposite Burt Reynolds. Kiều Chinh also produced a war epic Warrior, Who Are You (1971), which later would be remastered and shown in the U.S. at the 2003 Vietnamese International Film Festival.

Permission for the Giao Chỉ Films Studio's war film was initially rejected because the studio was privately owned, so general director Kiều Chinh asked for permission from the Ministry of Information, Ministry of National Defence, and especially the headquarter of the Republic of Vietnam Military Forces. So during the summer of 1971, the project started filming. Later that year, the film was first shown at the Rex Movie Theatre which was the biggest theatre in South Vietnam. Later, it was shown at the Asian Film Festival in Taipei.

In Kiều Chinh's memoir, Warrior, Who Are You was allowed to be shown again in 1973. It had got the honor of being the first Vietnamese film shown at the Rex Movie Theatre. Rex's specialised in showing US blockbusters such as Doctor Zhivago or Romeo and Juliet. Kiều Chinh must "insisted" Madame Ưng Thi who was an owner of Rex Theatre.

Giao Chỉ Films decided to initially offer free entrance for military men and their families. So the screening event was a great success with full houses. The entire crew all went to Pink Night tearoom to celebrate.

Kiều Chinh's, Warrior, Who Are You was the first war movie to dominate newspaper headlines in South Vietnam. The total cost was 15 million VN$ (1US$ = 277,75VN$ in 1970), but the first month's profit was more than 48 million VN$.

The film won the Best War Film & Best Theme (for Hoàng Vĩnh Lộc) and Best Leading Actress (for Kiều Chinh) at the Asian International Film Festival XVI in Taipei on June 6, 1971. From then until now, it has been given notable mention in all lists of Vietnamese films, though was still forbidden to appear on television channels.

1975–1995: Asylum, starting over and reuniting with relatives
In April 1975, while Chinh was on a film set in Singapore, she realised that North Vietnam was about to overrun Saigon. She returned to South Vietnam, and then on to Singapore using her diplomatic passport. When the government of South Vietnam fell, she was deported from Singapore because her diplomatic passport was no longer valid. She was refused entry to France, Britain and the US. Eventually, she was admitted to Canada. She needed to get a job immediately and ended up working on a chicken farm. She tried to contact previous acquaintances in the acting world including Glenn Ford and Burt Reynolds, but both were "unavailable" to help. Eventually, she contacted Tippi Hedren who arranged an air ticket and a US visa for her and invited her to her home. William Holden also was supportive once he had found out about Chinh's plight. Kiều Chinh resumed her acting career in the US, her first part being in a 1977 episode of M*A*S*H "In Love and War", written by Alan Alda and loosely based on her life story.

Personal life
During the peak period of boat people fleeing the border since 1980, Chinh did charity work for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. She called for the attention of the US government to help Vietnamese boat people floating at sea or trapped in refugee camps. In 1993, together with journalist Terry A. Anderson, Kieu Chinh co-founded the Vietnam Children's Fund, a non-profit organization that has built a network of elementary schools in Vietnam as living memorials to remember the families and children lost in that country’s long wars. The first school was located in Quảng Trị and named after one of the association's founders, Lewis Burwell Puller Jr., in memory of the American veteran who passed away nearly a year earlier. By 2016, the organization had built its 50th school in Quảng Nam province.

The family is Buddhist, but Kieu Chinh attended a Christian school when she was young. When Chinh got married, she became a Buddhist. Both religions play an important role in her life. In 2014, she met the 14th Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, and in 2016 at the Vietnamese Buddhist temple in Westminster, California. Kieu Chinh and her husband Nang Te Nguyen (Nguyễn Năng Tế) had three children. The couple divorced in 1980.