Top 50 Simu Liu Quotes

As an actor of color, I was overlooked at every possible opportunity. I was given roles that were almost not roles. It was, like, Scared Asian Guy. Whether I was a scared Asian guy in front of a computer or a scared Asian guy getting robbed in the grocery store, I always played these pathetic, low-status characters.

I realized, if I don’t step into the spotlight, and the person next to me doesn’t step in, and the people around me don’t step in, then who will?

There is something missing in Asian America. They’re missing people to tell them, ‘It’s okay to be who you are – you belong. Just be unapologetically you; you’re not less than anybody else.’

I spent the better part of my young life searching for people’s approval and validation, and not getting any of it.

We didn’t grow up in any sort of meaningful representation in media apart from, you know, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Bruce Lee. But, of course, that was different still, because it always played to this narrative of the foreigner from the East.

I believe in the cultural significance of the Marvel Universe and ‘Kim’s Convenience.’ They are two weapons in the same fight and they mean everything to me and the possibilities of what they can represent.

It does feel like we get to just carte blanche create a superhero origin story for 2021, for this day and age, that is told through a distinctly Asian American lens.

Kim’s’ is one of the most unique shows to hit the air, with its focus on individual and communal growth, family, and most importantly: immigrant culture.

It’s important that we meet any sort of hate and negativity with joy and celebration.

Being a Marvel superhero has always been a dream of mine. And so I think every choice that I made in my career, every step that I took, brought me to that point.

And so it became a priority for me to make sure that all Asian Canadians or Asian Americans or wherever you are, Asian Australians, felt like they belonged.

There was a cute girl on the crew that I was trying to impress during a very elaborate stunt. I winked at her and, when I started running, proceeded to lose my balance, fall, banged my knee, and ended up sprawled out 12 feet in the air.

I loved superhero movies growing up.

Asian men specifically have not been portrayed as the leading man or sex symbol.

If I just track Shang-Chi’s journey in the context of table tennis in my life, it actually fits perfectly, and that’s why I was able to sink into the character so, so seamlessly.

The most important thing is to show up. You’ve just got to get your butt out there.

I’ve always had a bit of delusional confidence.

I’ve had dogs in my life pretty much from the moment I’ve been on my own.

When the world is telling us, ‘We hate you because you’re Asian, we hate you because we think you brought this virus to the world’… we need to kind of meet that with an equal and opposing force.

Obviously, learning the martial arts is a big part of my training, but the other part of being a Marvel superhero is, well, looking like a superhero.

If it’s true that I wouldn’t have had a career if it weren’t for these conversations about diversity, the importance of representation, then I need to continue to fight that battle for the people that come after me.

My parents came to this country with literally nothing.

Representation matters. And it’s about more than just actors on a screen. It’s about snacks, it’s about food, it’s about culture, in every possible way.

We’ve seen a million versions of the Peter Parker radioactive-spider origin story. We’ve seen Thomas and Martha Wayne at the opera… over and over again in movies and media, and I think we’re ready for something new.

I was a dress-up Spider-Man for kids’ birthday parties for a while.

I’d just woken up from a nap, it was around 6:30 in the evening. I was eating some shrimp crackers at my desk. Then I get a call from an unknown number in Burbank, California and my heart immediately skips a beat because I know the Disney home office is in Burbank.

We have a lot of heroes. We have Asian heroes, we have Asian American heroes, men, women, of all ages, and not all of them do martial arts. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t have their own arcs, their own stories, their own subtleties and nuances. And I think that’s what’s important.

It’s hard enough to celebrate being Asian in normal times. But now, when the whole world is kind of coming down, with all this rhetoric and people getting attacked on the street, you really need to deliberately try to celebrate Asian-ness.

Things like ‘following your passion’ and ‘finding your creative outlets’ didn’t mean anything to me because I didn’t have that area of my brain.

I studied finance and accounting in college, and I worked at a massive accounting firm out of graduation.

Anti-Asian racism is very real, and it will not be solved with an opulent rom-com or Marvel superhero, but with you – the bystanders – acknowledging the validity of our pain.

I have always prided myself on being able to speak my mind.

As an Asian man in the industry, you had to know martial arts.

I’m outing myself as a huge comic book nerd.

I’ve always just been such a big fan of the MCU and anything Marvel, really.

I’m Asian-Canadian.

All of the cultural nuances and the traumas and the complexities that come with being a third-culture kid, these are all nuances that the quote-unquote system of Hollywood is just starting to become privy to.

I would never in a million years have expected my life to have unfolded the way it did.

What needs to change, really, is that we need better representation behind the camera. We need better representation among the people who tell the stories or the people who greenlight the movies.

I’ve seen cashiers, servers, transit operators, bank tellers and customs officers speak much too quickly on purpose as if it pained them to have to spend another second of their lives conversing with my parents.

I definitely dabbled and had done a number of stunt jobs in which I was doing fighting.

A superhero represents infinite possibility. It represents the peak of aspiration and courage. And if you see yourself reflected as a superhero, you will give yourself permission to dream anything.

Of course, we know Shang-Chi is the, in the comics or in the world of Marvel, he is the master of Kung Fu. He is the greatest hand-to-hand fighter in the universe, and so we had to really bring it and I feel like we did it a really big way.

I’m a big Taika fan, even before he did ‘Ragnarok.’

Just because there’s one Asian American superhero in the MCU, it does not by any means imply that our fight is finished right there.

All around me, I saw people who were taught by their parents, as I was, to just toe the line, not ruffle the feathers, not rock the boat too much and just put your head down, do your work and that’s it. And I think that as a community, we’re reaching the limitations of that kind of thinking.

To fully understand the roots of anti-Asian prejudice in America, you need to know about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that banned all immigration from China, even though it was Chinese immigrants that had essentially built America’s railroad system.

We saw David Carradine, who is not of Asian descent, playing an Asian man on the show ‘Kung Fu’ that originally should have, and was developed for, Bruce Lee. To have that be the legacy that quote-unquote inspired ‘Shang-Chi’ in the beginning obviously doesn’t put us off to a great start.

When I was like 22 years old, I wrote this bible for a Sunfire series. So, Sunfire is actually one of the members of the first X-Men team, and he’s a Japanese mutant who got his powers from a young age and grew up in an environment raised by his uncle to hate America.

I remember doing 5th grade math when I was like seven years old. My parents just constantly pushed me, in a good way, to always demand excellence in everything that I did.