Ally McBeal, Kill Bill, Charlie's Angels
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“Anything creative, anything to do with art — dance, theater, music, visual art itself — all contributes to the big picture. Reading books, writing poems, even the newspaper…just being a part of something, collecting all that information and data, culminates into every form of expression.” While Lucy Liu is well-known as an actress, she has also explored her creative side in many other ways -- from directing to visual art. Still, for many fans of Ally McBeal, she’ll always be the ferocious Ling Woo, a role that was actually created for her.
Certainly, Lucy Liu has come a long way since her childhood days in Queens, and she’s got an equally bright future ahead of her. Here’s a closer look at the life of Lucy Liu.
From Jackson Heights to Ally McBeal
Lucy Liu was born on December 2, 1968 in Jackson Heights in Queens, New York. Her immigrant parents, Tom and Cecilia, were a civil engineer and biochemist, respectively. She is the youngest of three children.
Liu identifies with her roots and has fond childhood memories of growing up in her diverse neighborhood. “A lot of my memories of Queens and Jackson Heights were of hanging out in the alleyway with my friends. As someone who was very young, I remember the Mister Softee [ice cream truck] coming around in the summertime. I remember, when I started high school, the long walk from my house to the subway station. And I remember the Q66, the bus down Northern Boulevard,” she said in an interview with the Asia Society.
Liu’s family spoke Mandarin at home, and she started her English studies at the age of five. As a child, she also studied martial arts. Liu graduated from New York’s prestigious Stuyvesant High School, and briefly attended New York University before transferring to the University of Michigan, from which she earned a degree in Asian languages and cultures.
Liu’s first big break in the business came at 19 when an agent discovered her while she was riding the subway. This led to her booking one commercial. She was also involved in theater during college, and starred in a production of Alice in Wonderland during her senior year.
In 1990, Liu auditioned for the Broadway musical Miss Saigon. She told The New York Times at the time, “There aren’t many Asian roles, and it’s very difficult to get your foot in the door.” Two years later, she made her New York stage debut in the play Fairy Bones.
Several small television roles followed for Liu on shows including L.A. Law, Hercules: The Legendary Journals, the X-Files, and ER before she landed her first regular television role on the show Pearl in 1996. While that show was short-lived, Liu’s next role would change her life: Ling Woo on Ally McBeal. Liu originally auditioned for the role of Nelle Porter. That part when to Portia de Rossi, but director David E. Kelley was so impressed with Liu that he wrote the character of Ling Woo for her. And while that part was originally intended to be temporary, audiences loved the show, and Liu became a regular. In addition to being adored by fans, Liu also received praise from critics, along with Emmy and Screen Actors Guild award nominations.
Still, Liu has revealed that she almost turned it down to do a play instead. Her manager insisted that she do Ally McBeal, and the rest is television history.
Breathing New Life into Familiar Roles
Since Ally McBeal, Liu has continued to make a name for herself in Hollywood. In 2000, she joined Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz in the film Charlie’s Angels. The fresh take on the classic hit earned a whopping $264 million at the box office worldwide. Liu also appeared in the sequel, 2003’s Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.
In the early 2000s, Liu returned to television on shows including Saturday Night Live, Sex and the City, Cashmere Mafia, Futurama, and The Simpsons. Then came another unforgettable Liu character: O-Ren Ishii in Quentin Tarantino’s 2000 movie, Kill Bill, for which she won an MTV “Best Movie Villain” award.
The 2000s continued to be busy for Liu, who amassed a broad range of roles in everything from television sitcoms to silver screen thrillers. During this time period, she also made two significant debuts: as a producer and on Broadway in the Tony Award-winning play God of Carnage.
2012 brought yet another big opportunity for Liu: the return to a regular television role on the American Sherlock Holmes adaptation, Elementary. As with Ally McBeal, Liu was initially hesitant to take the part. “I said ‘no.’ I passed on it a couple of times. I just thought, you know what, to take something that’s a movie that was very recent and a current TV show, I just didn’t know what could be different about it,” she told The Independent. But there was something very different about the role, after all: Liu was tapped to play Watson, a traditionally male character.
The risk paid off for Liu, and she received significant praise for her work, including multiple People’s Choice Awards. Other honors received by Liu over the years have included membership in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, being named Harvard’s 2016 Artist of the Year, and receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 2015, Liu began her directing career. She’s said of the switch from one side of the camera to the other, “I guess I was curious about it. Having been in this business for a while, you kind of see and get a glimpse of everything doing film and television. I think it seemed like a natural progression to go into directing, and I hope to explore more of it, because it’s very exciting and a really good way to collide all the things that you’ve known and experienced in the business and put them all into one.”
In addition to acting on screen, Liu has been sought-after for her voiceover work, with roles in Mulan II and the Kung Fu Panda franchise. She's also enjoyed a successful career as a visual artist in several types of media under the pseudonym Yu Ling. She’s held shows everywhere from Munich to Singapore.
Lucy Liu is involved with many charities, and has supported breast cancer research and education as well as human rights causes. Liu has also championed for more Asian American representation in the industry. “I think it’s getting better, but it’s a very slow process. If you look at what’s going on, more so on television than in film, you really see there is more of a difference than there was even 10 or 20 years ago. Could it progress faster? I don’t know. Could it be more than what it is? Absolutely, there could always be more. I’m hoping that is the direction we’re going as we move towards the future,” she has said.
Still, Liu urged the next generation of aspiring Asian American actors to follow their dreams -- as long as they understand what they’re getting into. “I would tell them that it’s a very, very difficult career. But if they really are okay with rejection and perseverance and a long creative journey, then they should absolutely pursue it. To negotiate what’s ahead of them — to understand that it’s not an easy role, but that it’s incredibly rewarding,” she said.
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