{"id":483480,"date":"2022-08-11T18:24:37","date_gmt":"2022-08-11T15:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/simu-liu-shares-his-acting-origin-story\/"},"modified":"2022-08-11T18:24:37","modified_gmt":"2022-08-11T15:24:37","slug":"simu-liu-shares-his-acting-origin-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/simu-liu-shares-his-acting-origin-story\/","title":{"rendered":"#Simu Liu shares his acting origin story"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_84 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2599a20cf60\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a2599a20cf60\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/simu-liu-shares-his-acting-origin-story\/#%E2%80%9CSimu_Liu_shares_his_acting_origin_story%E2%80%9D\" >&#8220;Simu Liu shares his acting origin story&#8221;<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"%E2%80%9CSimu_Liu_shares_his_acting_origin_story%E2%80%9D\"><\/span>&#8220;Simu Liu shares his acting origin story&#8221;<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<div>\n                            In this excerpt from his memoir, We Were Dreamers, actor Simu Liu shares how he ditched his gig at Deloitte for a wildly successful acting career.\n                        <\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><em>Whether hitting the red carpet for the premiere of Brad Pitt\u2019s <\/em>Bullet Train<em>, licking a frozen maggot to life on <\/em>Running Wild With Bear Grylls<em>, or teasing fans with hints about Shang-Chi\u2019s future in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Simu Liu remains one of the most <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news<\/a>worthy Canadian celebrities alive. His recent memoir, <\/em>We Were Dreamers<em>, tells an intense story\u2014 under a lighthearted and often very funny surface narrative\u2014about the Asian immigrant experience in Canada, especially intergenerational tensions. What Liu wanted for himself was to perform and to see himself and other Asian actors as the leads in their own stories; what his parents wanted and expected was something, virtually anything, light years away from such a precarious livelihood. It was one thing for Liu to bluff his way through business school, but by March 2012, seven months after he\u2019d graduated and landed a parent-<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>roved accounting job at Deloitte, he began to find life unbearable.<\/em><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\"><em>\u00a0<\/em>\u2014<em>Brian Bethune<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">While I was caught in the midst of my downward spiral, I\u2019d occasionally see a post or two from acquaintances in the tricking community and almost die of envy. Many of the people who trained in the same sprung-floor gyms as me years ago were now professional stuntmen, having worked in the film industry for years. I\u2019d pore through their demo footage in my spare time, imagining myself working on a real-life Hollywood film set. If you had asked me then, I\u2019d have told you dead-ass to your face that my dream was to be that one Asian guy that says one line and then gets shot. Those guys were living out their best lives, while I was watching the seconds of my life tick away as I was confined to a job I despised.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">More than anyone else, I idolized Chris Mark, a prodigious young martial artist and gymnast who had lent his talents to films like\u00a0<i>The Hunger <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/game\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"7\" title=\"Game\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Game<\/a>s<\/i>, <i>Suicide Squad<\/i>, <i>Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, <\/i>and pretty much any action movie or TV show that ever shot in Toronto. This guy could do everything from superfast fight choreography to weapons to acrobatics and wirework. To me, he was an absolute god, whose career was so far out of the reach of mortals like me that I need not even try. I fantasized about getting punched in the face on-screen, or thrown down a flight of stairs, or being blown up in a massive explosion.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Desperate for even a small taste of show business while lacking even the slightest clue as to how I\u2019d navigate there, I started browsing the ads section of Craigslist.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Now I know what you\u2019re thinking and yes, there were a lot of sketchy postings on \u201ctalent.\u201d I wouldn\u2019t recommend touching Craigslist with a 20-foot pole today, especially if you\u2019re a woman\u2014I was just impatient and highly, highly stupid. I really didn\u2019t know what I was looking for until I found it one day, wedged between casting calls for a busty adult film actress and (I\u2019m not joking) a model for a seminude mud-wrestling photo shoot: ASIAN EXTRAS NEEDED FOR HOLLYWOOD FILM.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><i>Holy shit<\/i>, I thought. <i>That\u2019s me! I\u2019m Asian!!<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">What did I have to lose? I replied with a shirtless pic (just trying to put my best foot forward, guys) and received a response from a woman at Extras Casting Toronto almost im<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a>tely; I had been cast in the movie codenamed <i>Still Seas<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">The rush that I felt from opening this email was more profound than anything I had experienced in my entire academic and professional life. I couldn\u2019t believe it; <i>I was going to be in a movie!<\/i><span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>I had cross-referenced the casting agency\u2019s name and email online, and everything appeared to be legit. Just to be safe, I convinced [my friend] Jason to come along as well\u2014it\u2019s fitting that seven years later he would be the first one I\u2019d call after finding out I booked the role of Shang-Chi.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">\u201cThere\u2019s just one thing,\u201d the agent said to me over the phone. \u201cYour shoot dates are during the week; if you have a regular job, you\u2019re going to have to make arrangements. Is that okay?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">\u201cThank you for the opportunity, but I\u2019m going to have to decline,\u201d I responded. \u201cI have a full-time job in a field I am deeply passionate about, and I wouldn\u2019t want to jeopardize that for the chance to be on a real movie set.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Ha. Just kidding. I told her no problem, and that I\u2019d fake an illness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">When Jason and I arrived on set for our first day of shooting, bleary eyed at four in the morning, we quickly realized that <i>Still Seas<\/i> was actually <i>Pacific Rim<\/i>, a massive Guillermo del Toro blockbuster where gigantic human-piloted robots called jaegers fought equally massive monsters known as kaiju. In our scene, a kaiju had just exploded over Hong Kong and covered the area in its blue blood; thus, we needed to be spray-painted head to toe with layers of blue and black for dirt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Toronto was freezing in March\u2014I distinctly remember the feeling of the ice-cold paint being sprayed across my nipples as I shivered in our holding tent, thinking that this was the single coolest thing I\u2019d ever done.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">The crew of the film had built an entire fa\u00e7ade of a Hong Kong street that had been decimated by a monster attack, and fit it inside a hangar-size soundstage. I took my spot among the 200 other Asian smurfs who had answered the call of Craig, my eyes drinking in every little detail of the scenery. The level of detail was astonishing, from the authentic HK storefronts to the drops of blood on the individual pieces of rubble on the ground. As I looked around me, I saw people I\u2019d later learn were grips, gaffers, camera assistants, assistant directors and sound engineers, all full of vibrant energy and purpose. Everybody was so engaged in what they were doing, like they actually wanted to be there. Take after take, no matter where the camera was, we\u2019d do our best to try and sneak into the shot and make it into the movie.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Before that day, I had never understood what \u201cdo work that you love and you\u2019ll never work a day in your life\u201d meant. We were paid minimum wage for our work, less than half of my hourly rate at Deloitte. Of course, that didn\u2019t matter\u2014hell, I would have paid for the opportunity. After a grueling 14-hour day, still covered in spray paint, Jason and I got on the bus and waited eagerly for our next shoot day, as if we hadn\u2019t worked a single second.<\/p>\n<hr\/>\n<p>Excerpted from\u00a0<i>We Were Dreamers: An Immigrant Superhero Origin Story\u00a0<\/i>by Simu Liu \u00a92022. Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1238913 lazyload\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/download.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"182\" height=\"278\"\/><\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async defer crossorigin=\"anonymous\" src=\"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. 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Whether hitting the red carpet for the premiere of Brad Pitt\u2019s Bullet Train, licking a frozen maggot to life on Running Wild&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":483481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/unnamed-766x431.jpeg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17209,158,132243,5021,98549,1361,31039],"class_list":["post-483480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-books","tag-culture","tag-excerpt","tag-hollywood","tag-mcu","tag-movies","tag-simu-liu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}