Lucy Liu on Art, Movies, and Becoming the Voice of Mercedes

Lucy Liu has been quite outspoken in recent years, calling out the unjust treatment of women and the paucity of roles for non-white actors in Hollywood, and advocating for the rights of children through the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), among other relevant topics. But she wasn’t always so vocal.

“I don’t think I really found my voice until I was in college,” the 56-year-old SAG award–winning actress—known in part for her roles in Jerry Maguire, and the Kill Bill and Charlie’s Angels franchises—tells Robb Report in an exclusive interview.

Advocating for who she was and what she believed in was a struggle before she became an undergraduate. During the pandemic, Liu’s mother gave her a packet of report cards from her youth in New York City. “And they had comments like ‘She doesn’t speak, she’s very shy, she doesn’t participate,’” Liu says. Having to translate and code-switch between her Chinese and American identities was intrinsic to this challenge. “I do think I was incredibly awkward in trying to find my way through two different cultures, two different languages,” she says.

Though perhaps better known for her work in front of the camera, Liu is also a respected artist behind one, having exhibited her photography, as well as her paintings and sculptures, at galleries and museums around the world. But she doesn’t see a distinction between these divergent forms of creative output; to her, all are means of articulating what she’s feeling. “It’s the same brain and the same emotional expression,” she says. “It’s just done in a different form.”

Liu was recently asked to audition for an entirely different role as well, one that would lend authority to her voice in a unique way: the voice of Mercedes-Benz in the German automaker’s marketing communications and advertisements. “I had submitted this tape, this voiceover, it felt like a year ago. So, when I got the call, I was shocked. I thought they had already probably placed somebody. It was a wonderful surprise,” Liu says.

Liu takes over from actor Jon Hamm, who held the job of Mercedes-Benz spokesperson and brand ambassador for 15 years. She believes this shift provides her with a fresh platform and opportunity to create something novel. “I think the beginning of something—you know, planting a seed—is advocating for change, and it only takes a slight shift to really start to move things,” Liu says.

Mercedes-Benz clearly feels the same way. According to Melody Lee, the marque’s chief marketing officer, numerous commissioned studies have shown that female-voiced ads rate higher for favorability, brand recall, relevance, memorability, and engagement, than those voiced by men.

Liu, for her part, takes this adulation in stride. “I don’t compete with a male voice. I don’t ever compare myself to others,” she says. This is a function of necessity, in part. “One thing about coming up in this business, when there was very little representation, was, I never really needed to compare myself to anybody else. And so that’s not my first thought when I walk into any job or audition, or before I start a new canvas,” Liu says. “I think if you ‘sell’ something and you go back and you try to make something similar that you want to ‘sell,’ you’re already in the red zone. And I think, for me, acceleration and moving forward is about not repeating yourself.”

Liu is certainly not repeating herself with her latest endeavors. She recently starred in the Stephen Soderbergh thriller Presence, produced and starred in the Eric Lin–directed Asian-American indie film Rosemead—a mental-health drama—and is seemingly set to appear in the forthcoming sequel to the comedy The Devil Wears Prada.

This is quite a diverse slate, but it isn’t even the complete list according to Liu. “I have some other exciting projects that are coming up which are not announced yet, but they’re moving forward,” she says. “So, to me right now, it’s a really wonderful time of incubation.”

Since Liu has conquered the dramatic, visual, and audio arts, it seems worthwhile to ask if she’s interested in taking on something else, like modern dance. “I mean, get me on the dance floor,” she says, laughing. “Honestly, to me, life is a dance, and so you really just don’t know what is going to happen, and I think that’s part of the wonderful improv of how we are moving in the world,” she says. “Any form of expression is always interesting to me. I’m just curious about everything and I think that’s part of what keeps me young and just advancing.”