Gender: Female Race or Ethnicity: Asian Sexual orientation: See Note [1] Occupation: Actor
Nationality: United States Executive summary: Ling on Ally McBeal
Lucy Liu is the daughter of Chinese immigrants to America, and was raised in an Italian neighborhood in New York City. While studying Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan, she auditioned for a small role in the school production of Alice in Wonderland as envisioned by Andre Gregory, assuming she was the wrong ethnicity to play the lead. But she was cast as Alice, drew good notices, and decided to become an actress.
When Liu first came to Hollywood, she earned the rent by working in a massage parlor and as a waitress, and in her first professional role she played a waitress at the Peach Pit diner in an early episode of Beverly Hills, 90210. In 1995 she played the mother of an AIDS patient in several episodes on ER. In her first noteworthy big screen role, she played one of Tom Cruise's ex-girlfriends in Jerry Maguire, then took a featured role as a college student obsessed with getting good grades on the mid-1990s sitcom Pearl with Rhea Perlman and Malcolm McDowell. She played a stripper in City of Industry with Harvey Keitel and a dominatrix in Payback with Mel Gibson. Her biggest break came on TV's Ally McBeal with Calista Flockhart, where Liu played the brutally honest, ever-litigious Ling Woo.
She had an almost-starring role as the kidnapped Princess Pei Pei in Shanghai Noon with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson. She played one of Charlie's Angels with Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz, but reportedly did not get along with Bill Murray on the set, leading to Murray's replacement by Bernie Mac in the sequel. She starred opposite Antonio Banderas in the action flop Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, had a small but pivotal role as a murdering mistress in the jails of Chicago with Renιe Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones, played the deadly crimelord Cottonmouth, leader of the Crazy 88s, in Kill Bill Vol. 1 with Uma Thurman, and starred as the risen-from-the-dead reporter in the thriller Rise with Michael Chiklis.
Liu speaks fluent Mandarin and Italian and adequate French and Japanese, plays the accordion, and is proficient in Kali Eskrima Silat, a form of Indonesian knife and stick fighting. She produced Freedom's Fury, a 2006 documentary about the 1956 Olympic semifinal water polo match between Hungary and Russia, held just after Russia invaded Hungary.
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AKA Lucy Alexis Liu