Backed by a long career of over three decades, Lucy Alexis Liu is one of the most famous Asian-American stars in Hollywood. Her iconic roles on both the small and the big screen have earned Lucy Liu not only accolades but also helped build her net worth.
Liu was born on 2 December 1968 to Chinese immigrant parents in New York City. She learnt martial arts and theatre during her school and college years. Today, Liu has acting credits in over 40 films and more than 50 TV shows with several as in main roles.
All about Lucy Liu’s net worth, movies and TV shows
What is the net worth of Lucy Liu?
Lucy Liu has a net worth of around USD 16 million, according to celebrity wealth tracker Celebrity Net Worth. It is quite surprising given that Liu has been acting since the early 1990s and, as data from box office tracker The Numbers shows, films starring her in any kind of role have grossed close to USD 4 billion at the worldwide box office.
Highest-grossing films of Lucy Liu
A look at the box office performance of her films reveals that 12 of them grossed over USD 100 million.
Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011) is her highest-grossing film with a global haul of USD 664 million. It is followed by the first film in the animated franchise, Kung Fu Panda (2008), with a gross of USD 631 million. Her third-highest-grossing movie is Kung Fu Panda 3 (2016), which earned USD 520 million.
Thus, all three of Lucy Liu’s biggest box office successes are animated movies.
She has delivered quite a few major hits in the live-action format as well. In fact, her next four highest grossers – which are also her other USD-200-million-plus movies – are live-action movies.
The highest-grossing among them is the musical crime comedy Chicago (2002). Starring Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere in lead roles, the film was both critically and commercially successful.
Liu plays Kitty Baxter, a rich heiress who murders her husband and his two mistresses. Though her role was more like a guest appearance, her performance in that short time was widely appreciated by fans. Among the accolades the film received were six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. In all, it grossed over USD 306 million.
Jerry Maguire (1996), the next highest with a haul of USD 273 million, was also one of the major movies in which Liu made a guest appearance. However, it is worth noting that it was a very early film of her career and she hadn’t yet got her breakthrough. The film’s main leads are Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Renée Zellweger. It was also critically well-received, with five Oscar nods.
Charlie’s Angels (2000) and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003) are the two most successful movies of Lucy Liu in a leading role. While the former earned around USD 259 million, the latter ended its run with a gross of around USD 227 million.
Thus, the seven movies of Lucy Liu earned over USD 200 million at the box office, including three animation films and four live-action films.
Other major movies of Lucy Liu
Though Charlie’s Angels shot Lucy Liu to stardom, she made her mark on the big screen a few months before with Shanghai Noon (2000). That film, widely hailed as one of martial arts icon Jackie Chan‘s most famous movies of all time, technically established Liu as a leading figure in cinema.
She plays the main role of Princess Pei Pei, a late 19th-century Chinese princess who is deceived by her lover and taken to America where she is held captive for ransom by a ruthless Chinese rebel named Lo Fong, played by Roger Yuan. Chan’s character, Chon Wang, unwittingly joins forces with a talkative former gang leader Roy O’Bannon, played by Owen Wilson, to rescue Pei Pei.
The film was critically well-received and quite popular among fans of Chan. Liu’s performance as the princess was praised by many. However, the film did not perform very well at the box office, earning around USD 99 million worldwide.
It was just months after the release of Shanghai Noon that Liu became a top star with her appearance in Charlie’s Angels alongside Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz. Interestingly, Liu landed her iconic role of Alex Munday after Thandie Newton, who was originally set to play the character, dropped out.
Now an established star of the big screen, Liu took on an even more iconic role in the outstanding Quentin Tarantino action duology — Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003) and Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004).
Liu played O-Ren Ishii in the two films. She is the main antagonist in the first and appears in some scenes in the second. Her character is the leader of the Japanese yakuza and a deadly assassin who betrays Uma Thurman’s character Beatrix “the Bride” Kiddo.
Together, the two films grossed over USD 320 million worldwide. Their critical reception was even greater, with multiple Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations among other accolades.
Liu’s most recent big-budget movie was Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023), a sequel to Shazam! (2019) and the 12th instalment in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU). Liu plays Kalypso, the middle daughter of the Greek mythological titan Atlas — the main antagonist in the film. Other major actors in the sequel include Zachary Levi, Asher Angel, Jack Dylan Grazer, Adam Brody, Helen Mirren, and Rachel Zegler among others.
Her next major cinematic projects include Old Guy and Red One, both scheduled for release in 2024. She co-stars with Christoph Waltz and Cooper Hoffman in the former and with Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans and J. K. Simmons in the latter.
Television career
Before she earned international fame through the movies, Lucy Liu had established herself as a recognisable face on the small screen. According to Emmy, Liu and Margaret Cho were the only two Asian-American actresses to appear in a significant primetime role on American television in the 1990s.
Liu made her acting debut with a role in Beverly Hills, 90210 (1991). Following a string of roles in shows such as L.A. Law (1993) and ER (1995), she was cast in the main role of Amy Li in Pearl (1996–1997).
By this time, Liu had made her big screen debut with the Hong Kong drama Rhythm of Destiny (1992), which starred Danny Lee and Aaron Kwok, and was forging a path in cinema.
Yet it was her career in TV where she enjoyed major success before Shanghai Noon and Charlie’s Angels widened her fame.
Soon after the end of Pearl following one season, Liu found her breakthrough with Ally McBeal (1998–2002). She had originally auditioned for the role of Nelle Porter, played in the show by Portia de Rossi, but her audition was so impressive that the makers decided to create the character of Ling Woo especially to cast her.
Speaking to Emmy in 2013, David E. Kelley, the writer-producer of Ally McBeal, said, “I was already casting her before she was out of the room because you could tell she had star power right from the beginning.”
Liu became a permanent cast member due to high audience ratings for her character. Due to her performance, she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy award in the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series category in 1999. She also won the Screen Actors Guild Award Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series in 1998 for the show.
It was the success of Ally McBeal which established Liu as a major Hollywood star and helped her land leading or prominent roles in subsequent movies and shows.
With her footing firmly established, Liu found even more critical acclaim with Elementary (2012–2019), a detective thriller show based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. She broke traditional boundaries by playing Watson, the friend and trusted partner of Holmes, which was until then played by white men.
Lucy Liu is also an artist
Besides being a top star, Lucy Liu is also famous for her artwork. She has exhibited her artworks since the early 1990s and studied art at the New York Studio School from 2004 to 2006.
She has often given away part of the profits from her exhibitions to UNICEF.
“I have been known to dumpster-dive. If I see something really fascinating and warped or distorted, like a piece of metal, I’ll jump over and grab it and create something from it,” Liu told The Guardian in 2011 about her time growing up in Queens, New York. “There was something very warm about sitting in this environment of junk and rubble and discarded things, lost things. I had such a feeling of being at home.”
The exact worth of all her artworks is, however, not known.
Properties owned by Lucy Liu
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Lucy Liu bought a property in 2001 for USD 2.3 million. The Fryman Canyon property was previously owned by Patricia Arquette. Liu put the property up for sale in 2018 for USD 4.2 million but eventually parted with it for USD 3 million in 2019.
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She also owned properties in her hometown of New York City. One of the earlier purchases was a townhouse-style boutique near Union Square in 2005. It was bought for USD 2 million back then. A year later, she purchased a second unit in the same building in which her first was located, paying roughly the same amount for it. Since both units occupy consecutive floors, they form a larger unit together.
(Hero and Featured images: Ali Goldstein – © CBS ©2019 CBS Interactive, Inc./IMDb)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Lucy Liu has a net worth of around USD 16 million, according to 'Celebrity Net Worth'.
Some of the most famous roles done by Lucy Liu across movies and TV shows include Princess Pei Pei, Alex Munday, O-Ren Ishii, Master Viper (voice), Kalypso, Amy Li, Ling Woo and Dr. Joan Watson.
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Written by
Manas Sen Gupta writes at the intersection of tech, entertainment and history. His works have appeared in publications such as The Statesman, Myanmar Matters, Hindustan Times and News18/ETV. In his spare time, Manas loves studying interactive charts and topographic maps. When not doing either, he prefers reading detective fiction. Spring is his favourite season and he can happily eat a bowl of noodles any time of the day.
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