Lucy Liu

Lucy Alexis Liu is an American actress, producer, and artist born on December 2, 1968, in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, New York City. The youngest of three children, she grew up speaking Mandarin at home and began learning English at age five. Her mother, Cecilia, worked as a biochemist, and her father, Tom Liu, was a civil engineer who also sold digital clock pens. Her parents emigrated from Beijing and Shanghai, first to Taiwan, before settling in New York. Liu attended Joseph Pulitzer Middle School and graduated from Stuyvesant High School. She initially enrolled at New York University before transferring to the University of Michigan, where she was a member of the Chi Omega sorority and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Asian languages and cultures in 1990.

Liu's interest in acting began in childhood, and at nineteen she was discovered by an agent while riding the subway, leading to her first commercial appearance. As a member of the Basement Arts student theater group, she auditioned in 1989 for the University of Michigan's production of Alice in Wonderland, originally trying out for a supporting role before being cast in the lead. In May 1992, she made her New York stage debut in Fairy Bones, directed by Tina Chen. That same year she made her film debut in the Hong Kong production Rhythm of Destiny. Early television work included an episode of L.A. Law in 1993 and an appearance on The X-Files before she joined the cast of the short-lived Rhea Perlman sitcom Pearl.

Her career shifted significantly when she was cast as Ling Woo on the Fox legal comedy-drama Ally McBeal, a role that ran from 1998 to 2002. The character was created specifically for her after she originally auditioned for the role of Nelle Porter. Strong audience response elevated her from a temporary to a permanent cast member, and the performance earned her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series as well as a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series.

Liu expanded into film prominently in 2000, starring alongside Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz in Charlie's Angels, followed by its 2003 sequel Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. She appeared as O-Ren Ishii in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Volume 1 in 2003 and Kill Bill: Volume 2 in 2004, winning an MTV Award for Best Movie Villain for the role. During negotiations for Kill Bill, she and Tarantino collaborated to help produce the Hungarian sports documentary Freedom's Fury. Additional film credits from the period include Payback (1999), Shanghai Noon (2000), Chicago (2002), Lucky Number Slevin (2006), and Watching the Detectives (2007). She has since appeared in The Man with the Iron Fists (2012), Set It Up (2018), Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023), Presence (2024), and the psychological drama Rosemead (2025). Her voice work includes Master Viper in the first three Kung Fu Panda films (2008–2016), Silvermist in the Tinker Bell series (2008–2015), and roles in Mulan II (2004), Maya & Miguel (2004–2007), Strange World (2022), The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013), and Magic Wonderland (2014).

On television, Liu starred as Dr. Joan Watson in the CBS crime drama Elementary from 2012 to 2019 and as Simone Grove in Why Women Kill in 2019. She has received two Critics' Choice Awards and two Screen Actors Guild Awards across her career, along with nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2019, she became the second Chinese American woman to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Liu made her Broadway debut in 2009, appearing in God of Carnage. Beyond performance, she has maintained a parallel career as a visual artist, working in collage, painting, and photography. She began creating collage mixed media at age sixteen and later studied drawing, painting, and sculpture at the New York Studio School from 2004 to 2006. She previously exhibited her artwork under her Chinese name, Yu Ling. Her painting Escape was included in Montblanc's Cutting Edge Art Collection and displayed at Art Basel Miami in 2008. Proceeds from several of her gallery shows, including a 2006 New York exhibition and sales from her book Seventy Two in London, were donated to UNICEF, an organization she has served as an ambassador for the U.S. Fund since 2004. In 2007 she hosted an MTV documentary on human trafficking for the MTV EXIT campaign, and in 2008 she produced and narrated the short film The Road to Traffik, about Cambodian human rights advocate Somaly Mam.