Lucy Liu was born December 2, 1968, in New York City, to her Chinese immigrant parents and has an older brother, John Ya Liu, and older sister, Jenny Liu. Her parents, highly educated and employed in China, sacrificed much to bring their family to the U.S. They lived in a small cockroach-infested apartment in Queens, surviving on rice and cucumbers. Lucy Liu ended up a child sweatshop worker when she was only eleven.
However, she managed to graduate from New York’s famous Stuyvestant High School and later from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor with a degree in Chinese language and culture.
Lucy Liu got her acting breakthrough when she got the lead role in the U of M’s production of Alice in Wonderland, and then had a few minor roles in television, such as X-Files and Sex and the City, before landing her big role on hit TV series Ally McBeal, alongside Calista Flockhart. Her claim to fame came around when she starred as the feisty Alex alongside Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Bill Murray in the wildly successful and popular Charlie’s Angels in 2000. She starred in the sequel several years later, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle; however, it did quite poorly at the box office and with reviews. However, Liu came back with her role as ruthless assassin O-Ren Ishii in Quentin Tarantino’s gory Kill Bill flicks, starring Uma Thurman as the bride. Lucy Liu even won an MTV Movie Award for Best Movie Villain.
Lucy Liu has also made several guest appearances on prominent prime-time TV series, such as Joey, starring Matt LeBlanc, in which she played his director and one of his love interests. Interestingly, LeBlanc played Liu’s boyfriend in Charlie’s Angels. Liu also made guest appearances in Futurama and The Simpsons.
Romantically, Lucy Liu has been linked to actor George Clooney, and was reportedly engaged for a time to New York playwright Zach Helm, but then the relationship broke off.
Another interesting little tidbit about Lucy Liu is that she speaks Mandarin and Italian fluently, as well as French and Japanese in addition to English. She was appointed a U.S. Fund for UNICEF Ambassador in 2005 and has a tattoo of a tiger on her lower back. Her hobbies include playing the accordion and making collages.
YUDDY
