Lucy Liu: Art, Angels and AIDS

Lucy Liu is an ambassador for UNICEF. In the past two-and-a-half years, she has visited children whose world has been rocked by earthquakes in Pakistan or washed away by the fierce force of nature in Thailand, and infants whose future in Africa has been sacrificed to a pandemic called A.I.D.S.

Behind the shadows of box-office success in Shanghai Noon, Payback, Charlie's Angels and Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Liu seemed publicly destined to popular-culture-action-icon status.

However, with a silent and empowering performance in 3 Needles, producer's credit on the Tribeca hit Freedom's Fury, a documentary worthy of the Academy's attention, an auction just ended of her artwork in New York, and a half-dozen projects with rollercoaster budgets already slated for release through mid-2008, an enlightened and enthusiastic artist has emerged on our collective canvas.

The United Nations Children's Fund

Having recently auctioned (with the help of Sotheby's) her mixed media collage, photography and paintings to benefit UNICEF, Liu is energized by the extension of her commitment to the Children's Fund beyond the visits to regions afflicted by famine, disease and other disasters. Liu admits, however, that the work owes no small regard to her UNICEF experiences. "It's odd... I find when I travel and come back and paint, the work is just different. And you can't say that it's not connected, because you take in different colors, the architecture, as well as the people; and I think it just naturally becomes part of you. And when you change, your work changes...whether it's art or acting."

As to why UNICEF, Liu informs us, "I think that children are vulnerable and they're innocent, and no matter what's going on in a country, no matter what a president or prime minister is doing, no matter how that country is handling world politics or nuclear weapons, it has nothing to do with their children at that time. Politically, we don't try and get involved. We don't say, ‘Oh, obviously people coming out of Pakistan are terrorists... Why should we contribute to the earthquake when people coming out of there potentially contributed to 9/11?' However you view it, ultimately we're not talking about those people, we're talking about the children. The more I travel, the more it seems that everyone is connected in a very unique way.

"You can understand why Audrey Hepburn sort of gave up everything to go and be a part of the organization, because there's so much to be done and the more you travel you realize you really can make a difference. I come out of it feeling fueled to bring positivity into an area. You feel like, ‘Okay, we've assessed the situation, now what's the next step? What do we have to do? What's the plan?' For the earthquake victims in Balakot [Pakistan], we went on Oprah. Going on Oprah, [who] has such a huge impact around the world, and getting as much publicity as we possibly could in a very short amount of time, couldn't have been a better idea for this devastated area."

AIDS is definitely something that comes with the territory, and the proliferation of the pandemic is the subject of Thom Fitzgerald's latest feature, 3 Needles, a collection of vignettes that, together, take aim at three different ways the AIDS virus is dealt with in different parts of the globe: from the nonchalance of the ego-driven porn actor and his bug-chasing mother, to the helter-skelter of Africa's already AIDS-pervaded landscape, and to China, where poor education and poverty render a community silent in a unified helplessness to the "riches" of blood-smugglers. "It's the plague of our century that is only going to get progressively worse," adds Liu, "and I think people are recognizing that more now. I've noticed it in the verbal consciousness of more and more people. Even former President Clinton is bringing that to the forefront in his speeches as he travels the world. You can't go to a country and try to meet children and be with them and talk to them about education, and [have] AIDS not be a part of it."

3 Needles

Slated to open in the U.S. on December 1 (World AIDS Day), Liu was sent the script a year and half before her scenes were shot, even though Fitzgerald had already shot the African part of the film (featuring Chloe Sevigny, Sandra Oh and Olympia Dukakis). "Thom didn't want [my character] to have a conscience; he wanted her to just be someone who would collect the money for delivering blood, but I thought it would be so much more powerful if she had her own undercurrent. Thom said there are people who exist in the world who just don't care, but I said you want the audience to care about what's going on.

"You're not trying to pull somebody's emotional value from them, you're not trying to interfere with the way they feel, but if you give them a little more of a foundation for the character then it's easier for the audience to relate. And they can relate in any way that they want, even if they find her despicable. It helps if you humanize someone and their story; it helps bring the whole movie into a much denser place so that it has some ground to hold onto."

Liu's vignette was shot in northern Thailand, an area with a large Chinese community composed predominantly of descendents of the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) who fled China in 1949 following the Communist takeover. The movie's lack of a budget meant they couldn't afford to film anywhere where a government had issues with the script, for fear of having their footage confiscated.

Liu states simply, "I don't know" as to how to get people who are not AIDS-conscious to go out and support this film, offering, "It's the same thing as An Inconvenient Truth - people don't know that there's hope at the end of that documentary, they just think they're going to see how the world is going to end.

"I think Thom has a wonderful way of bringing humor in that's wonderful to any story; levity shouldn't be left out of a situation even if we are dealing with something as tragic as AIDS. I don't think he's trying to offend anyone; I think he's just trying to be honest, and within that honesty there's humor that comes out of it...as well as some graphic issues."

Not known for her political platforms, Liu considers that she's "politically inclined, but probably not as public about it as other people. I don't always go out and discuss [the environment and public policy] because I think it distracts from what I would like to focus on, which is children. If you have too many things you are focusing on, then you just stand for everything rather than just one very important thing. I think that's wonderful about Thom's movie: It's very clear what it is about. The main channel of the movie is about AIDS and HIV, but the idea of it is that it's about something that not only spreads through people but it changes how they live and their emotional wellbeing, and because it's an emotional thing and not just a physical burden, it affects everyone around them."

"Maybe in the commercial world I'm known more for roles in which I'm being a heavy or for martial arts or things like that," Liu considers, "but these other movies that I've been working on for $1.5 million, those are things I think are really wonderful to work on as well. I do think that's a healthy mentality, because sometimes if a movie's so independent, they need someone who can actually greenlight the financing. So if it weren't for one, you wouldn't have the other, and vice versa. I'm not saying you can't find someone who doesn't have a name for your film, but a lot of times the financiers are not people associated with the business, and they want someone they're familiar with because often it's their own personal money and it makes them feel more comfortable."

The Journey

Lucy Liu has literally played angels and villains, and picked up some handy skills along the way. Although, given the Joe-jobs held by the native New Yorker before "Ally McBeal" launched her career into orbit just eight years ago, you get the feeling that Liu would have found her piece of ground anyway. "I've sold T-shirts on the street in New York I've been a hostess; I've been in food services, retail; I served breakfast, catering for people in the morning for commercials... It's all part of the journey."

To those who share her path, she offers, "I always knew that if I wanted to continue to have the ability to express myself, I would also have to have the ability to have some money. And I think people mistake that, sometimes, by thinking that ‘if I'm an artist, that's all I need to do.' But I think you need to have your head on your shoulders to understand that not everybody is going to understand art the way you think they should...and you can't struggle to the point where you let yourself lose that expression and become embittered or desperate.

"I never stopped and thought, ‘I want a career like this person or that person,' not just because of [the limitations of] being Asian American, but because of the importance of understanding that you're on your individual path and there are different crossroads and different journeys... I don't know where mine's going to take me, but I have absolute confidence that it's the right direction."

In the meantime, the world continues to shrink, and unite, one child at a time. Ambassadors who increase awareness and understanding? Now that's a great concept behind which to unite.

By Lucy Liu

I thought An Inconvenient Truth was wonderful, really well done, really important, bipartisan... It was about giving you the facts, how things can change and how you as an individual can change them. It left you with a feeling that if you begin individually to mobilize your efforts, then maybe people will understand and, hopefully, they'll try to do the same thing.

I recycle pretty much everything I can get my hands on. I paint on things I find on the street as well: wood and glass and plastic. When I worked on this movie recently [Watching the Detectives], there wasn't recycling and so I asked if it was possible for us to have a recycling bin. They were, "Sure, of course," but maybe I wouldn't have thought about that before. I don't leave my plugs in the outlets if I don't have something that's charging. I have a [Toyota] Prius. I try to be as aware as I can be.

Photographs courtesy of Wolfe Releasing.