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Iconic RolesA career guide · fact-checked July 2026
Few actors can claim a network sitcom, a blockbuster franchise, a Tarantino villain, and a seven-season lead drama. Lucy Liu can. Here are the roles that built one of the most varied careers in Hollywood.
Ling Woo — Ally McBeal (1998-2002)
The role that started it all was written for her. Liu auditioned for a different part and lost it, but creator David E. Kelley was so struck that he invented a new character, the sharp-tongued attorney Ling Woo, specifically for her. "I was already casting her before she was out of the room," Kelley recalled. A planned short arc became permanent, and the performance earned Liu Emmy and SAG Award nominations and made her one of the most prominent Asian-American actors on American television.
Alex Munday — Charlie's Angels (2000, 2003)
As one of the three Angels alongside Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore, Liu became a global movie star. The two films were glossy, action-packed blockbusters, and they cemented her as a leading lady in mainstream Hollywood at the turn of the millennium.
Kitty Baxter — Chicago (2002)
Liu had a memorable turn as the murderess Kitty in the film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture, the first musical to do so in decades. The ensemble, Liu included, won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast.
O-Ren Ishii — Kill Bill (2003-2004)
For many, this is the definitive Lucy Liu role. In Quentin Tarantino's two-part epic she plays O-Ren Ishii, code-named "Cottonmouth," a former assassin who rises to rule the Tokyo underworld and becomes the Bride's first great target in the snow-covered House of Blue Leaves. Her tragic backstory is told through a striking anime sequence animated by Production I.G. The role won Liu the MTV Movie Award for Best Villain and remains one of the most-referenced images of her career.
Dr. Joan Watson — Elementary (2012-2019)
Liu anchored seven seasons and more than 150 episodes of CBS's Elementary as Dr. Joan Watson, a groundbreaking reimagining of Sherlock Holmes's partner as a woman and former surgeon turned detective, opposite Jonny Lee Miller. It was her longest-running lead, and she stepped behind the camera to direct several episodes — the start of her directing career.
The voice work
A generation of kids knows Liu without knowing her face: she voiced Master Viper in all three Kung Fu Panda films and Silvermist across Disney's Tinker Bell series.
The recent renaissance
Liu's 2020s have been among her richest. She played the DC villain Kalypso in Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023), starred in Steven Soderbergh's inventive ghost-story Presence (a 2024 Sundance premiere released in January 2025), and drew the strongest reviews of her career as Irene, a terminally ill immigrant mother, in Rosemead (2025), which she also produced. In 2026 she joined The Devil Wears Prada 2 as billionaire divorcee Sasha Barnes.
Milestones
Liu hosted Saturday Night Live on December 16, 2000, the first Asian-American woman to do so. In 2019 she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, becoming the second Asian-American woman to be honored, after the pioneering Anna May Wong, whose star sits beside hers. She was named Harvard University's Artist of the Year in 2016, and in 2025 received a career achievement award at the Locarno Film Festival. Away from the screen she is an exhibited visual artist and a longtime UNICEF ambassador.