A Quote by Gemma Chan

As a means to an end, modelling was good, but I had to distance myself from it when I started working as an actress, because even though I wasn't high-profile, I found in my first write-ups that I'd be referred to as 'model Gemma Chan.'
I became an actress way into my 30s because I thought that I had to find my own way, and that's why I worked so much in modelling, until I realised that the differences between acting and modelling weren't that great. I always say that modelling is a little bit like being a silent actress.
I never even wanted to be an actress. I studied mass communication and wanted to study law in Newcastle, for which I even got a scholarship. But by then, I had started modelling. So, I took a year off to decide what to do. But once you are used to working, it's difficult to get back to studies.
Winning the Miss India Earth 2013 title proved to be a stepping stone for a career in modelling and, eventually, films, though I didn't aspire to become either a model or an actress.
Once in a while I catch myself wondering whether I would have found the courage to write if I had not started to write when I was too young to know what was good for me.
For me, modelling has been an advantage because if I hadn't been modelling, I would never have been spotted as an actress. I didn't have any intention of becoming an actress.
I started out as an actor, but I forced myself to be a writer, even though I wasn't very good at it and had never written. I don't think I ever passed an English course in my life. My first eight to 10 scripts were pretty horrendous, but I stayed at it, stayed at it, and stayed at it, until I eventually found a voice and a subject like Rocky that people were interested in.
Even though novels were the love of my life, I started off writing poetry. I think because I had a knack for image and lyricism, even though I didn't really have anything to write about, or I didn't know what to write about. I could just couple words together that pleased me and so poetry seemed sort of natural.
My dad is from the army, and so we studied all over. I had done an Onida campaign at the age of two, as my mom always had this inclination for me to model, but my dad was clear that I could model only when I turned 18, so immediately after school, I started modelling.
Even though I was a reluctant reader in junior high and high school, I found myself writing poems in the back of class.
I first tried a novel when I was 14. First finished one when I was 16. First started working on stuff that had a chance of being salable in my early 20s, then didn't write much fiction at all because I was in grad school.
English was great because I could just write my opinion, and that was good enough. I was terrible in Math, even though I had amazing Math teachers. My favorite subject was either English or History. I had a really awesome high school education.
I started event managing as my first career which I started in 1989, and that was the first year when I started modelling as well, so every time I start something new it is because of an interest that I have and then that interest becomes sustainable and doable.
As I was not a good singer - I have started to sing. And because no one could write an appropriate song for me - I started to write songs by myself.
At that point it certainly would be called abstract. That is to say, you had a model and there'd be one or two or three people there drawing the model but otherwise you had abstractions all around the room, even though the model was in front of you.
For me, when I go in to write a profile, and no ground rules are laid down, and I'm there to write an on-the-record profile and cover readings while in the room, then that means it's on the record.
People have always assumed that I am privileged. And that has been a problem sometimes. When I first started modelling, and I was schlepping around London with no money, I found it rather irksome that people thought I had a private income when I didn't.
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