How Simu Liu went from stock photo model to starring in Barbie and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings – interview
The Marvel actor on persevering with unglamorous jobs on his way up as a way to respect the hard work of his parents before him
“A lot of the lore of my career and my come-up is the stock photos, and there are so many things that people didn’t see,” says Liu, who was born in China but raised in Canada, where he first started acting. “I was on a street corner doing flash mobs for yogurt companies and handing out dog food on the side. I was doing anything in order to fuel my craft.”
Liu dials in to our interview from London having just wrapped filming for Avengers: Doomsday, a far cry from stock photo immortality on the internet and a film that the actor calls “a pretty tremendous undertaking … and one that I believe does my character [Shang-Chi] justice – that’s meaningful, that’s real”. Still, Liu speaks about his craft as if nothing about its essence has changed. Acting, be it for US$120 in cash (what he earned for a day of stock photo shooting) or a multimillion-dollar pay cheque, is still his living. The naked ambition and do or die mentality are still there.
“Even though [the stock photo shoots were] 10 years ago, I really do remember it like it was yesterday,” he says. “As hard as those years were, man, life was simpler back then – very singular. Do whatever you need to do in order to get on set, and it didn’t matter what set. Any time you got to do the thing you loved, it was a win, and part of me still operates that way.”
Liu’s character arc in real life resembles a Cinderella story, and entirely by design. The actor worked hard at the unglamorous stuff but was never shy about putting himself out there, famously manifesting his role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a single tweet back in 2018 – three whole years before he emerged as Shang-Chi on the silver screen. Liu, however, looks back on his industry beginnings as survival rather than serendipity, saying yes to “four or five different jobs at once, and whoever would hire me for whatever … as a stuntman some days, a screenwriter other days, an extra if I had to be.”
“I was either being set on fire or someone next to me was, and then I’d be getting beat up,” he laughs. “Monday I’d come right back into the writers’ room or I’d be doing a play reading for an independent theatre in Toronto. That was life. And I truly mean it when I say I was happy.”
On leaving another previous life at accounting firm Deloitte behind, Liu says, “I made peace with the fact that I was probably never going to own a house in my life.” It was only after forgoing any sense of stability that he found his purpose. “My friends were cautiously supportive of my life choices and what I was going through, but meanwhile were all progressing in their careers,” he says. “My thing was I didn’t have a plan B. I knew myself, the life I wanted to live, and – I should say – the life I was incapable of living.”