Text | Indifferent one
Many people will probably substitute themselves into Simona, played by Liu Yuling, of the three women when watching "Deadly Woman", and when she is fifty years old, she can still charm the eighteen-year-old small fresh meat, which is simply a winner in life.
But she is Liu Yuling, the only Chinese actress on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the only Chinese actress who has left her own star, the last one is Huang Liushuang.
With this alone, Liu Yuling has a position that is absolutely difficult to surpass among Chinese actresses.
Liu Yuling left a star on the Avenue of Stars
Born in Queens, New York, Liu Yuling is a standard second-generation immigrant, her parents in the early years in Taiwan to do civil engineering and biochemical industry, after coming to the United States from the lowest level of labor, which led Liu Yuling to experience a very difficult childhood life.
She said she had a desire to become a performer when she was about eight or nine years old, playing with the children in Queens in the alleys near her home.
But with that professional background and difficult transition period of immigration, her parents did not support her artistic ideals, and Liu Yuling grew up on a regular path of study, graduating from the University of Michigan with a bachelor's degree in Asian language and culture.
Liu Yuling in her teenage years
The reason why she was able to enter the film and television industry was because once when she was on the subway, she was looked for by a star scout to shoot advertisements, and she slowly began to contact acting through the school's drama activities, when she got alice in the school's "Alice in Wonderland", and at that time began to realize that she could really become an actor.
But Asian actors obviously don't have as many opportunities, recalling the time when they took the initiative to contact some agents, Liu Yuling said: "Everyone wants to put me on their shortlist, but no one is willing to commit to me, because they don't know how many auditions they can give me." 」
Finally, in 1990, she had a small role in the TV series "Flying Over Beverly". Although it is a very ordinary waitress, not a special role, and to some extent fits the marginal identity of Asians, this is at least the beginning.
Flying Over Beverly
After that, she starred in small roles in works such as "Mr. Sweetheart" and "The Prodigal Son Returns To Many Wonderful Things", which were not too popular, but they also became a kind of foreshadowing.
Only she herself knew how hard it was to get to this point.
"As someone from another country, growing up in this place, the reality is really not like what you see on TV, I never saw myself standing in front of the stage, never, we were always behind the scenes." 」
The turning point was in 1997, when Liu Yuling played lawyer Wu Ling, an Asian female lawyer, in "SweetHeart Pretty Lady", for which she was also nominated for the Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actress. There was no such character in the script at the time, and it was producer David Kelly who worked hard to promote this role that belonged only to Liu Yuling.
Wu Ling in "Sweetheart Pretty Lady"
This drama has a special significance for Liu Yuling and hollywood TV drama circles, and the emergence of Chinese women like Liu Yuling in the female group of American dramas, as the mainstream elite group of lawyers, can be said to be a bold attempt at the time.
The cold and elite temperament of Wu Ling also continued to Liu Yuling's later roles, such as the prostitute in "Dangerous People" or the female killer in "Chicago".
Dangerous People
2000 was another nodal year, when Liu Yuling and Jackie Chan co-starred in "Shanghai Noon", when Jackie Chan had opened up the situation in Hollywood, but this film was more like an oriental spectacle for Hollywood.
"Shanghai Noon"
What really made her famous was "Thunderbolt Baby" at the end of that year, a film adapted from the TV series "Charlie's Angel" that dominated the box office for two consecutive weeks at that time, and also made Liu Yuling really a household name Hollywood star.
Although "Thunderbolt Baby" was only released at the end of 2000, its shooting time was actually similar to that of "Sweetheart Pretty Lady", so Liu Yuling had to ask producer David Kelly to coordinate the time for herself.
"Filming Thunderbolt was an important moment for me. When I got the chance, I had to ask David Kelly to allow me to take time out of Sweetheart to make this popcorn movie. I said, 'Listen, this isn't Shakespeare, it's not any other similar work, but it's important for America because I'm going to play a role that's usually played by white people.' 」
"Thunderbolt Baby"
Later, Quentin's "Kill Bill" pushed this image of beating women to a peak, the gang boss who killed the whole table because she was questioned about her ethnicity, which can be called one of the most classic female killer characters on the screen.
"Kill Bill"
In recent years, Liu Yuling has appeared more in American dramas, and has also retreated to the background and begun to do production work.
In recent years, her best-known role is clearly the female version of Watson in Sherlock Holmes: Basic Deduction, which has led to a completely different Sherlock Holmes story. It follows the original storyline and makes the relationship between Watson and Holmes more equal.
In "Femme Fatale", she is the focus of the three women, to some extent, Simone is the one of them who currently has the clearest understanding and control of her marriage crisis, can let her husband get out of the egg at any time, but chooses to maintain the marriage for her own face, while also clearly telling her little lover: "I will never hate him, because he is my husband".
But Liu Yuling actually has more identities after the actor, she has been a director since the second season of "Sherlock Holmes: Basic Interpretation", and she is also included in the director list of "Deadly Woman".
She was an artist, even much earlier than she became an actress, having studied collage in New York since she was 15 years old and had solo exhibitions in New York as early as 1993, only to use her Chinese name in those exhibitions.
For her, at first it was perhaps some kind of self-confirmation, but later, Chinese name became a kind of protection for her. Because she didn't want people to know, it was Lucy Liu who had acted in "Thunderbolt Baby" and "Kill Bill".
Liu Yuling responds to 911's work "Speed"
Liu Yuling also borrowed a phrase from Taoism to explain her original intention: "The idea in Taoism is to get rid of preconceived notions about things, so that all that remains is open thought." This can probably be used as a summary and interpretation of her past, which has been subjected to ethnic preconceptions.
One of her most recent works, Lost and Found, brings together the items she has collected over the years around the world and thrown away into a series of books that she has exhibited in Singapore.
Liu Yuling's "Lost and Found"
Actress, director, producer, artist, Liu Yuling is very comfortable with her multiple identities, she said she feels that any form of expression is art: "I don't think I would reject any particular medium, including the performing arts. Because there are no real limits to people who express themselves."
In 2015, there was a lot of news about her, she has never been married and had children, and posted photos of herself and her son - surrogate.
This caused an uproar at the time, with some praising her as a benchmark for independent women in the new era, completely liberating herself from traditional women's social and family roles; and some people criticized the ethical issues of surrogacy, believing that she was using her celebrity abilities to exploit other women. But that's another topic.
But to some extent, Liu Yuling's personal life really forms a correspondence between the play and the outside of the play with her recent "Deadly Woman".
When she left a star on this year's Walk of Fame, her son also attended.
Her "Fuck you money" theory has also been turned over because of the fire of this drama, which can be summed up in fact, women must be financially independent to have the right to speak.
Liu Yuling, as the representative of Asian actresses in Hollywood, has actually been recognized many years ago.
A long-circulated saying is Disney's "Mulan", which first referred to the prototype design she did.
Mulan
In 2004, she appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair with twelve other A-list actresses, becoming the first Asian-American face to appear on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine.
Although it is a well-intentioned British cold humor, which is also mixed with self-deprecation, Watson in "Sherlock" talks about Liu Yuling's appearance that time, in fact, it also contradicts a certain prejudice that she is not in the mainstream aesthetic.
Appearing on the cover of Vanity Fair on the one hand can illustrate Liu Yuling's recognition, on the other hand, it is somewhat ironic to prove that in Hollywood, colored faces are always treated differently.
Liu Yuling became the one who was selected, which just proves that behind her, there are countless people who have been ignored.
Vanity Fair
This is actually similar to the doubts that Wu Zhuoshan once encountered when he won the award this year.
Asian faces seem to have become some kind of symbolic symbol, and Orientals don't feel that they represent the beauty of the East, at least not that they are the mainstream aesthetic of the moment.
In the eyes of Westerners, they are an aggregate of the mysteries of the Eastern world, of course, based on influence.
Wu Zhuoshan
The first Huang Liushuang to leave a star on the Walk of Fame because of her skin color, at that time, there was almost no chance to play the main role, and even could not kiss European and American actors on the screen.
Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Yang Ziqiong, including Liu Yuling in a specific period, all give people the impression of stardom, which is the stereotype of Chinese in the Western world, and this marginal cognition even extends to other Asian regions, and it is difficult for Asian actors to obtain mainstream roles.
Yellow willow cream
From this point of view, Liu Yuling, who can transform and change the Watson ethnicity, and become the main creator of both actors and directors in the latest big heroine hit series, has indeed reached the step that most actors dream of.
Before her, she was able to extend her influence as an actress to control the direction of her work creation, or Jackie Chan, but Liu Yuling is now more in the TV circle.
On this year's Walk of Fame, Liu Yuling sat down, the flashes rose and fell, and countless reporters were calling her name in order to take a photo of her looking into the camera, and the voice in the video was always "Lucy".
In her speech, Liu Yuling said: "Sometimes people say that my mainstream success is groundbreaking for Asians, but Asians have been making movies for a long time, and they can't stand here today because we weren't invited to the table."
It is unrealistic to expect one or two people to change the status quo of Asian actors in the eyes of the world, but fortunately, Liu Yuling let us see that things are changing subtly.