Lucy Lui Talks Candidly About Racism and Stereotypes in Hollywood

One of my favorite US actresses, Lucy Liu, is in Net-A-Porter’s Graphic Issue, which has me all kinds of excited. Because the only thing better than watching Liu at work is seeing her in fantastic frocks and reading interviews with her; she often has sharp, insightful comments on Hollywood and acting, while remaining quite modest and mellow.

She seems like she would be a lot of fun to hang out with.

(Lucy, come over some time! We’ll have tea and cookies!)

So Lucy Liu. At 44, she’s got a fair amount of experience in Hollywood, starting in the time-honored traditions of small guest roles and working her way on to “Ally McBeal.” She’s flitted back and forth between film and television, but as she herself points out, a lot of the roles she’s taken on have been really, really stereotyped.

You see, Lucy Liu is perfectly happy naming, and talking about, the elephant in the room: racism is a problem in Hollywood. Liu’s been cast as a Dragon Lady (Ling Woo on “Ally McBeal” for example), martial arts star (“Charlie’s Angels” and “Kill Bill”), and, of course, mysterious sex worker with links to the Chinese mafia (“Payback”).

What she’s not often cast as is a woman who happens to be Chinese-American, a role where her race could be acknowledged and wrapped into the plot, without turning her into a total stereotype.

“I wish people wouldn’t just see me as the Asian girl who beats everyone up, or the Asian girl with no emotion. People see Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock in a romantic comedy, but not me.”

She rightly notes that race confounds any casting decisions, making it impossible for her to be seen neutrally as an actress who might fit well in a role. Instead, her race is front and center in any discussions about how to use her in film and television:

“it [becomes], ‘Well, she’s too Asian’, or, ‘She’s too American’. I kind of got pushed out of both categories. It’s a very strange place to be. You’re not Asian enough and then you’re not American enough, so it gets really frustrating.”

Liu’s experiences in Hollywood, of course, mirror that of larger society, where Chinese-American women can find themselves in a strange social bind as they straddle multiple communities.

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