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Lucy Alexis Liu (born December 2, 1968 in Queens, New York) is an Emmy Award-nominated American actress. She became known for her role in the television series Ally McBeal (1998–2002) and has also appeared in several notable film roles, including Kill Bill and the Charlie's Angels films. Native New Yorker Lucy Liu skyrocketed to popularity in 1998 when she played the deliciously malicious Ling Woo on the hit comedy "Ally McBeal" (Fox, 1997-2002). Fresh off of her television success, she went on to establish a big screen persona as the petit, butt-kicking heroine of stylish action outings like the “Charlie’s Angels” franchise and “Kill Bill, Vol. 1” (2003). In 2007, she returned to a regular TV role with the Darren Star drama “Cashmere Mafia” (ABC, 2007), playing one a tightly-knit group of independent professional women supporting each other through the ups and downs of career and romance. For Liu, the change was welcome, in that with the new TV role, she would essay a real person with everyday problems, versus some secret agent or badass fighter which she had long made a career playing believably on the big screen. She was born and raised with her brother, Alex Liu, in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York by Taiwanese immigrant parents. Liu has said that she grew up in a "diverse" neighborhood. Her family spoke Mandarin at home and she did not learn English until she was five years old. Her father was a civil engineer and her mother a biochemist in Taiwan, but they sacrificed those careers to come to the United States. Liu, at her parents' insistence, devoted her spare time to studying. She attended the Joseph Pulitzer Middle School (I.S.145) and she graduated from New York City's prestigious Stuyvesant High School in 1986. She attended New York University for one year, before transferring to the University of Michigan where she joined the Chi Omega sorority and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Asian Languages and Cultures. At one point, Liu worked as a waitress in Michigan. Lucy Liu was born on Dec. 2, 1968 and raised in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, NY. Her parents were Taiwanese immigrants who left behind careers in biochemistry and civil engineering to start a new life in the State; with both encouraging their children to receive a full education and pursue professional careers of their own. Reluctant to make waves in her ambitious family, the arts-oriented Liu kept her dreams of a becoming an actress to herself, studying her favorite Charlie Chan films for inspiration. In 1986, she graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City and went on to New York University, but after one year, transferred to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI. While Liu closed in on a Bachelor of Science degree in Asian Languages and Culture, it was becoming harder to ignore her lifelong aspirations of acting. Her senior year she auditioned for a supporting role in a college production of “Alice in Wonderland” and was astonished to be offered the lead – particularly because the part typically called for blonde-haired Caucasian. In 1990, Liu broke the bad news to her parents — despite her freshly inked college degree, she was moving to Los Angeles to become an actress. “I just knew it was the only thing I felt strongly about,” she recalled in an interview years later. Liu began acting in 1989, after auditioning for a role in the University of Michigan's production of Alice in Wonderland during her senior year. Liu was cast in the lead role, although she had originally only tried out for a supporting part. Liu had small roles in films and TV (including the "Hell Money" episode of The X-Files and "The March to Freedom" episode on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) before landing a role on Ally McBeal. Liu originally auditioned for the role of 'Nelle Porter' (played by Portia de Rossi), and the character 'Ling Woo' was later created specifically for her. Liu's part on the series was originally not meant to be regular but the enthusiastic audience response to the actress' 'feisty' Ling Woo secured Liu as a permanent cast member. It also earned her an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. Liu cemented her reputation playing bad girls by portraying "Pearl" the sadistic dominatrix/hit woman for the Chinese mafia in the film Payback (1999). Liu became better known with her turn as Alex Munday in the Charlie's Angels film, alongside established Hollywood stars Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz. The film opened in November 2000 and was a hit, earning more than $125 million in the U.S., and a worldwide total of more than $264 million. The sequel, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, opened in June 2003 and was a box-office hit again, earning more than $100 million in the U.S., and a worldwide total of more than $259 million. In between the two films, Liu starred with Antonio Banderas in Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, a critical and box office failure. Liu next played O-Ren Ishii, one of the major villains in Quentin Tarantino's 2003 film, Kill Bill. She won an MTV Movie Award for "Best Movie Villain" for the part. Subsequently, Liu appeared on several episodes of Joey with Matt LeBlanc, who played her love interest in the Charlie's Angels movies. She also had smaller roles as Kitty Baxter in the film Chicago, and as a psychologist opposite Keira Knightley in the thriller Domino. In 2006, she played leading lady and love interest to Josh Hartnett in the crime thriller Lucky Number Slevin. Other appearances include a cameo on the animated show Futurama and recently, The Simpsons. Following the phenomenal success of "Charlie's Angels," however, Liu’s film career weathered its share of ups and downs. She starred opposite Antonio Banderas in the little-seen sci-fi thriller "Ecks vs. Sever" in 2002. She nabbed a part in the Oscar-winning film adaptation of the Broadway hit "Chicago" (2002), turning in a juicy if all-too-brief performance as murderess Kitty Baxter. In 2003, Liu reunited with Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore for the action-packed sequel "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" – a film which was more laughable than anything else and all but killed the franchise off. Undeterred, Liu got on board Quentin Tarantino's long-awaited fourth feature, "Kill Bill, Vol. 1" (2003), giving a bravura performance as Japanese-Chinese-American O-Ren Ishii, Queen of the Tokyo Underworld and leader of the Crazy 88 Fighters. Liu also enlivened the 2004-05 first season of the doomed "Friends" spin-off sitcom, "Joey" by playing the compulsively clean TV producer Lauren Beck on several episodes. Making a shift, Liu began to focus more on dramas, playing a role as an FBI psychologist in the feature film bounty hunter chronicle “Domino” (2005) and as a Mandarin black market blood dealer in “3 Needles,” which was not widely released but impressed the festival circuit with its gripping profiles of the international AIDS epidemic. Liu made her first foray into producing with the well-received documentary “Freedom’s Fury” (2006), which centered on a 1956 Olympic water polo tournament between Russia and Hungary that paralleled the nations’ struggle over power. Liu returned to the screen as a fast-talking coroner trying to help Josh Hartnett survive a case of mistaken identity in the thriller “Lucky Number Slevin” (2006) before taking an executive producer credit (and a supporting role) on the unfortunate Cedric the Entertainer flop, “Code Name: The Cleaner” (2007). A straight-to-video thriller “Rise: Blood Hunter” (2007) found undead journalist Liu on a quest for revenge against the vampires that took her life, until a waning film profile was interrupted with a return to series television on “The Cashmere Mafia” (ABC, 2007). From the executive producer of “Sex and The City” (HBO, 1998-2004), the highly anticipated hour-long drama promised to make the most of Liu’s persona as a strong, independent woman and a loyal friend – albeit, with a great wardrobe. In April 2006, the documentary Freedom's Fury premiered, with Liu as executive producer. The film dramatizes the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, climaxing with the infamous water polo showdown between Hungary and the Soviet Union at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, known as the 'Blood in the Water match'. Her film 3 Needles was released on December 1, 2006. In the film, she plays Jin Ping, an HIV-positive Chinese woman. Liu agreed to star in the film for lower than usual pay because she wanted to spread awareness about the way AIDS is improperly treated in China and Thailand. Liu's other recent roles include Code Name: The Cleaner, an action comedy released January 5, 2007 and, Rise, a supernatural thriller co-starring Michael Chiklis in which Liu plays an undead reporter, Watching the Detectives, an independent romantic comedy co-starring Cillian Murphy, and Kung Fu Panda, an animated film scheduled for 2008 in which she will voice a snake. Liu has also signed on to star in Beautiful Asian Brides and a new version of Charlie Chan which has been in pre-production since 2000; she will produce both films. Liu has guest starred as lawyer Grace Chin on Ugly Betty episode 16 "Derailed" and episode 17 "Icing on the Cake". She stars in the Sex and the City inspired TV show, Cashmere Mafia on ABC. In 2007, Empire magazine named her among the "100 Sexiest Movie Stars". In a Jane interview, she indicated the possibility that she is bisexual. She is quoted as saying, "I think people sometimes get the wrong impression when they're like, 'Oh, well, so-and-so was straight and then she was gay, and now she's straight again,' you know? But it's like, how many times do I have to kiss a woman before I'm gay? Everybody wants to label people. Sometimes you just fall in love with somebody, and you're really not thinking about what gender or whatever they happen to be. I think that if I happen to fall in love with a woman, everyone's going to make a big deal out of it. But if I happen to fall in love with a man, nobody cares." With her parents' work ethic, Liu continued, "I'm always multitasking, doing 10 things at once". She speaks Chinese, Italian, Spanish and a little Japanese, a language she studied in preparation for her role in Kill Bill. She also rock climbs, practices martial arts, skis, and plays the accordion. Liu is also an artist in several media, and has had three gallery shows showcasing her collage, paintings, and photography. She started doing collage mixed media at 16 and then moved to photography and later painting. Lucy Liu had an art show in September and she donated her share of the profits to UNICEF. She also has another show in 2008 in Munich and has stated that she will also donate her share of the profits to UNICEF. In 2001, Liu was the spokesperson for the Lee National Denim Day fund-raiser which raises millions of dollars for breast cancer research and education. In 2005, Liu was appointed a U.S. Fund for UNICEF Ambassador; in that capacity, she has traveled to Pakistan and Lesotho, among other countries. She also hosted an MTV documentary for the MTV EXIT campaign in 2007, produced to raise awareness of human trafficking in Asia. Early in 2006, Liu received an "Asian Excellence Award" for Visibility, since she is considered the most well-known and visible Asian American in the media today. She is also the first Asian-American woman to host Saturday Night Live. Liu has said about her background, "when you grow up Asian-American it’s difficult because you don’t know if you’re Asian or you’re American. You get confused... You need to recognize where your background is from. I think it’s important. Just for yourself. It makes you more whole. It does.", She lives with her brother and his wife in New York. |
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