From being an unemployed accountant to playing Spider-Man at children’s parties, Simu Liu is now the face of Marvel’s first Asian superhero in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
The 32-year old Chinese-Canadian recalls how one phone call changed his life from being a background actor to Marvel Cinematic Universe’s newest superhero.
“It was July 16th, 2019, about 6:30 p.m., early evening. I had just woken up from a nap, and I was in my underwear, eating shrimp crackers. My dog was napping in my apartment, and I just remember getting a call from an unknown number in Burbank, California. And just hearing Kevin Feige’s beautiful, booming voice on the other end, telling me that my life was going to change forever, was pretty memorable.
“I was looking back on my emails the other day. There was an email from 2014… almost seven years ago, where I was still doing background. I was a movie extra, making 14-15 bucks an hour and trying to make ends meet until I would get a big break and wondering if there was going to be a big break.
“When I say that this is a dream come true, that is such a huge understatement. I used to love watching Marvel movies when I was a kid, even before, pre-MCU. If there was a superhero, I wanted to watch it. This is all I’ve ever wanted.”
Before the life-changing phone call, Liu was one of the hundreds of Asian actors called to audition for the coveted role of Shang-Chi.
Producer Jonathan Schwartz recalls: “Simu came in and our casting director Sarah Finn had seen him before and brought him in again and he did a great reading with the director Destin Daniel Cretton. He then did a great chemistry read with the Awkwafina, who was gracious enough to do that. And a little bit I was like, ‘Who is this fellow? Let’s look them up.’
“And he did have this infectious personality online in the way he interacted with the world, and with the fandom of his show that he was doing in Canada at the time, and with his sports team that he was a fan of that was doing well when I happened to search him.
“He’s the real deal. Bringing a new Marvel hero into the fold is never easy, and there is always a lot of pressure on us and I’m sure on the actors, but Simu has pulled it off in ways that again, I’m very excited for audiences to finally see in September.”
For the first five years of his life, Liu slept with his grandparents each night, six thousand miles from his parents.
“My parents (his dad Zhenning and mom Zheng) had gotten the opportunity to study at Queen’s College in Kingston, Ontario, so they made the decision to leave me in the care of my grandparents.
“As full-time students, it would have been really, really difficult to be able to support me. And so I grew up in the care of these wonderful grandparents, in Harbin, China. I loved it. I wasn’t really aware of what I did or didn’t have. I had two amazing guardians in my yeye (grandfather) and my nainai (grandmother).”
When his parents moved him to Canada, Liu struggled with the language barrier.
“It was tough for a lot of reasons, least of all the language barrier. I really struggled to learn English at first. I remember being at my first daycare, just bawling my eyes out because I couldn’t understand what anybody was saying to me.”
Being the son of Chinese immigrants, Liu went through years of enduring challenges and sacrifices in order not to waste the opportunity given to him in their new home in Canada. His parents wanted him to pursue a degree in either medicine or law.
“My parents were academics, so it was the only path to success. But I wanted to play sports and chase girls, that’s all I was really interested in. I wanted to be the high school quarterback. And it led to a lot of tension in our family.
“When I was laid off as an accountant by the consulting firm Deloitte, it was just so disheartening. I felt like my life was over and like I was at rock bottom.
“That was the time I wanted to try acting. Initially to their credit, they were sympathetic. I think they knew that I was going through a lot with the loss of my job. But they became more and more panicked as they realized that I was actually serious. We had a lot of arguments about it. My parents felt like I was throwing my life away.”
Liu nabbed his first acting job in Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 sci-fi film Pacific Rim by responding to a Craigslist ad. He appeared in a number of small roles before breaking out in 2016 when he was cast as one of the leads in the Canadian comedy Kim’s Convenience, about a Korean family that runs a convenience store.
With his celebrity status, Liu was named one of Hello!’s 50 Most Beautiful Canadians and 25 Hottest Bachelors in 2017 and 2018.
In May 2021, Liu became the first East Asian man to be the cover of Men’s Health magazine in over a decade since Jet Li in 2010
With his newfound fame, Liu has begun to speak out about issues that were important to him. In October 2020, Liu was made the New Ambassador of UNICEF Canada to raise awareness for children’s rights in Canada and around the world.
In his Instagram, Liu posted: “Being a @UNICEFCanada ambassador means being able to shed a light on the plight of vulnerable children all over the world. It means fighting for each child’s right to bare necessities like food, water, shelter, education and immunisation. It means cutting through the misinformation, politicking and manufactured outrage to address real issues affecting children today. I’m incredibly honoured to be joining the UNICEF team and I can’t wait to do great and impactful things together!”
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings hits theaters exclusively starting on September 3 and marks the first cinematic entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s “phase four.” The film is to be followed up by both Eternals on November 5 and Spider-Man: No Way Home on December 17.
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