[7][9] They remained in exile in western China for five years until the war ended, after which they returned to Hong Kong and lived in a spacious, contemporary home her father designed.

Cared for by an amah (阿嬤), a woman who looks after children, Kwan owned a pony and passed her summers in resorts in Borneo, Macao, and Japan.

Another auditionee, French actress France Nuyen, played the stage version of the role and had been called a "businessman's delight" by a number of reviewers.

After four weeks of training with drama teachers, including hours of lessons with Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright–screenwriter John Patrick, Kwan's second screen test was a significant improvement.

Once, upon viewing her screen test, Kwan said, "I'm a terrible girl" and "squealed with embarrassment"; acting as a prostitute was a vastly different experience from her comfortable life with her affluent father.

[26] Scholar Jennifer Leah Chan of New York University wrote that Suzie provided an Asian actress—Kwan—with the most significant Hollywood role since actress Anna May Wong's success in the 1920s.

[28] The scene of Kwan, reposed on a davenport and adorned in a dazzling cheongsam, while showing a "deliciously decadent flash of thigh", became an iconic image.

[3] Clad in a cheongsam—"a Chinese dress with a high collar and slits, one on each side of the skirt"[10]—Kwan was on the October 1960 cover of Life, cementing her status as an eminent sex symbol in the 1960s.

Tom Lisanti and Louis Paul speculated that the wave of unfavorable media attention drove filmmakers to escalate the production of Kwan's next film.

Kwan said this was problematic because she found dialogue and an ability to appreciate and express humor important in a marriage: "You can't just sit around and stare at walls between love-making.

The infantry was training for military involvement in Malaya (now part of Malaysia), and the regiment's commanders believed that the infantrymen should be taught the Chinese language and how to handle chopsticks.

[17] In 1963, Nancy Kwan's long hair, famous from The World of Suzie Wong, was chopped into a sharp modernist bob by Vidal Sassoon for the film The Wild Affair, at the request of director John Krish.

[34] Designed by London hairdresser Vidal Sassoon, Kwan's bob cut in the film drew widespread media attention for the "severe geometry of her new hairstyle".

[citation needed] Ann Lloyd and Graham Fuller wrote in their book The Illustrated Who's Who of the Cinema: "Her Eurasian beauty and impish sense of humor could not sustain her stardom".

[1] Kwan discovered that she had to journey to Europe and Hong Kong to escape the ethnic typecasting in Hollywood that confined her largely to Asian roles in spite of her Eurasian appearance.

[10] Playing an English-Tahitian ward of the head master at an old English public school, she was praised by the Boston Globe for her "charming depict[ion]" of the character.

Author Darrell Y. Hamamoto noted that this "ironically" twisted Kwan's "dragon-lady role" through its underscoring the replacement of Kung Fu with Western dance moves.

In the 1980s, she returned to the United States,[47] where she played characters in the television series Fantasy Island, Knots Landing and Trapper John, M.D..[5] In 1976 Kwan married Norbert Meisel, an actor, director, screenwriter, and producer.

"[49] In a 1993 interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Kwan remarked that her son Bernie was frequently called a "blond, blue-eyed Chinese" because he could speak the language fluently.

[46] For the 1991 action comedy film Fast Getaway, fellow stunt performer Kenny Bates and he gripped hands and leaped off the Royal Gorge Bridge.

Kwan, producer Ray Stark, and restaurateur and Hong Kong film director Cecile Tang financed the restaurant, located on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood.

[8] In 1995, Kwan recorded an audiobook for Anchee Min's memoir Red Azalea in what Publishers Weekly called a "coolly understated performance that allows the story's subtleties and unexpected turns to work by themselves".

[54] In 1993, Kwan played Gussie Yang, a "tough-talking, soft-hearted Hong Kong restaurateur", in the fictional Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.

[46] She played a pivotal role in the film,[55] a character based on Seattle restaurateur and political leader Ruby Chow[1] who hires Bruce Lee as a dishwasher and gives him the funds to open a martial arts school.

[56][note 11] Variety reviewer Julio Martinez praised Kwan for her ability to "flo[w] easily between haughty sophistication and girlish insecurity".

[61] In 1994, an article in the South China Morning Post said that she preserved her "dancer's figure" through the Chinese martial art tai chi and frequent dance sessions.

[28] That year, she assumed the role of 52-year-old Martha in Singapore Repertory Theatre's showing of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, an "intense psychological play" by Edward Albee.

[1] On March 17, 2006, cheongsam-wearing Kwan and her husband, Norbert Meisel, attended the debut performance of Hong Kong Ballet's depiction of Suzie Wong at Sha Tin Town Hall.

"[4] In 2006, Kwan reunited with Flower Drum Song co-star James Shigeta to perform A. R. Gurney's two-person play Love Letters.

[4] Kwan wrote an introduction for the 2008 book For Goodness Sake: A Novel of the Afterlife of Suzie Wong written by American author James Clapp using the pen name Sebastian Gerard.