Stock in trade
Before Marvel, Simu Liu was a model
Marvel’s newest superhero, Canadian actor Simu Liu, doesn’t have a typical origin story.
Before the Kim’s Convenience star made his TV debut in 2012, and long before it was announced he is going to be the title character in Marvel’s Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Liu was a stock photos model.
Liu can be found in photos of offices, Facebook advertisements for chartered accountants’ courses, covers of health magazines and the manual for Quickbooks Accounting 2015.
It was a bit of a throwback for Liu since he studied finance and accounting at Western University and was an accountant for nine months before acting.
“Call Alanis Morissette because I just died from irony,” Liu wrote on Twitter.
Liu is not afraid to bring up his stock model career on social media, having posted some of the photos on his Twitter account and responding to fans asking if that’s really him.
“That stock photo shoot always finds a way to come back and haunt me,” Liu said about a photo of him used for a YMCA Canada advertisement.
“It never stops. #Thestockphotothatneverwentaway,” Liu tweeted in response to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada using his photo to advertise it was hiring.
Marvel said at San Diego Comic-con that Liu would be its newest hero, the franchise’s first Asian lead since the series began in 2008.
Liu was born in Harbin, China, and moved to Mississauga, Ont., with his family when he was five years old.
He is an advocate for Asian representation in film, saying diversity needs to be celebrated on screen.
“What I think has been happening in the last few years, and (Kim’s Convenience) is playing a huge part in this as well, is normalizing Asianness.
“Not just normalizing it, but turning it into something positive, something to be proud of,” Liu told CBC.
Shang-chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, helmed by The Glass Castle director Destin Daniel Cretton, is scheduled for release in February 2021.