Lucy Liu experienced a period of "personal reflection" during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 56-year-old actress admits that lockdown was a turning point in her career, as it changed how she looked at her work and the roles that she accepted.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Lucy explained: "I don’t think things really stopped until the pandemic — and once everyone stopped, it was really the first time to regain part of myself.
"I never looked at my history of work. I started to look at myself and where I was in my life and I recognised some of the things that I didn’t look at from my childhood and how I got to where I was. It was more of a personal reflection. I started to realise I need to own my worth.
"These projects coming down the pike started to seem like a little bit more of an afterthought. I didn’t want to participate in anything where I felt like they weren’t even taking me seriously. How am I being given these offers that are less than when I started in this business? It was a sign of disrespect to me, and I didn’t really want that. I didn’t want to acquiesce to that."
Lucy is widely regarded as a trailblazer for Asian American representation in Hollywood, and the actress believes that "something is changing" for her in the movie business.
The Charlie's Angels star explained: "I think that something is changing, and I don’t know if it’s the perception or I don’t know what it is. I want to work with people that I think are obviously very talented, but more so that are collaborative and kind, because the work is not just the work, it’s also my whole life.
"The commitment that you make when you work on something is you are erasing that time from your personal life. I don’t want to sacrifice any more time with insanity. There’s enough insanity just from the job itself, from the work and from the commitment to the job, before you even work during the work. I don’t want to feed into the entitlement of what this industry creates."
