“I don't necessarily defend or justify those actions,” he says. His dad calls him a source of shame and hits Liu repeatedly. In one scene in the book, Liu describes a fight with his father. That didn’t sit well with his parents, so they fought constantly, Liu says. He wanted to get a girlfriend, play sports and skip classes. “And so the path forward for me, according to them, was excelling in science and engineering or medicine or some field.”īut he had other desires. “Their entire definition of success is so closely tied with academic achievement,” Liu says. Throughout his youth, he says, his parents had high expectations for him. Liu stayed behind for a time with his grandparents and later joined his parents in Canada. Eventually, they moved to Canada, where they worked as engineers. “And it was those odds that my parents were able to overcome just to be able to get that education.”Īfter university, Liu’s parents worked and began to dream of emigrating from the country. “The national acceptance rate was something in the single digits,” Liu says. His parents competed with 10 years worth of applicants who had been denied a post-secondary education, but they both got accepted to the same university – where they would eventually meet. (Courtesy)īut when Chairman Mao Zedong died in 1976, universities opened up again. "We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story" by Simu Liu. At the time, the government shuttered universities across the country, so many students would go from high school “into the fields to learn the value of hard labor,” Liu says. His story starts with his parents, who were teenagers during China’s Cultural Revolution. This year, the 33-year-old actor released a memoir: " We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story." In the book, he chronicles his journey from his native China - as a Canadian immigrant, then failed accountant and finally successful superhero actor. The Chinese-Canadian actor played kung fu master Shang-Chi in the 2021 film “ Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” Simu Liu took a winding path to portraying Marvel’s first Asian superhero. (Emma McIntyre/Getty Images)Įditor's note: This segment was rebroadcast on June 9, 2023. Facebook Email Simu Liu attends the 94th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood and Highland on Main Hollywood, California.
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