LUCY LIU

Three decades into a boundary-breaking career redefining what Asian representation in Hollywood could look like, the erudite actor, artist and icon continues to defy conventions of being.

- CHANDREYEE RAY

Lucy Liu’s filmography may include over 90 titles, but the first time her son watched her act was in Red One, a holiday film based on the kidnapping of Santa Claus. In it, Liu plays Zoe, the intimidating leader of North Pole operatives investigating Santa’s disappearance and working to bring him back in time for Christmas. Naturally, the stakes had never been higher.

“This was the first movie of mine that Rockwell was able to watch that wouldn’t be disturbing in some way,” Liu laughs. “It was a wonderful experience. When children watch movies, you want them to get absorbed in the moment. That’s basically what happened—he was watching the film not remembering that I was in it. Then at one point he goes, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s Mummy!’ He wanted to see it again right away.”

Liu is speaking to me from her bedroom in her New York City home. Her long black hair sweeps gently over her shoulders and her features—arresting as when she first burst into the spotlight in the ’90s—light up brightly when she speaks of her son.

Liu has had a fairly unconventional path to motherhood. In 2015, at the age of 47, she welcomed her son, Rockwell Lloyd Liu, via a gestational surrogate. In the nine years since, she has chosen to raise him with the same level of privacy she has tended towards herself—in a fine balancing act with still letting him be a child.

“He knows what I do for work. As he’s gotten older, he’s become more aware of what my job might mean but I don’t know that he understands it fully,” she muses.

“Children are so pure. His teachers have told me that he talks about me sometimes and feels proud of me. There was a point when I was trying to teach him why privacy was important for our personal safety and I remember telling him not to bring up what I do to his classmates. But then I realised that I was taking these special moments away from him.”