A path not taken
Simu Liu reflects upon the moment that set him on the course to stardom
TEN years ago on April 12, actor Simu Liu was fired from accounting house Deloitte. The event was fondly looked back upon by Liu on the anniversary of the day that changed his life.
“I owe my life to being let go from a career I hated. Accounting [was] not for me,” he recently posted on Facebook.
In the caption, Liu wrote that he thought his life was over when he got the news that his job as an accountant had ended, and it wasn’t just about the loss of a paycheck.
“I had wasted countless time and money that my family had invested in me,” Liu wrote.
Liu noted that several of the years since his firing had been spent “running around like a headless chicken”, as he tried to figure out how to succeed in showbiz and desperately trying to pay off his credit card debt.
It’s only in the last three years, he said, that his efforts have begun to pay off, when he was inducted into the successful Marvel Cinematic Universe not as a side character, but as the lead of ShangChi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Liu played the MCU’s first Asian superhero and the film broke box office records.
“I know luck has played a substantial role in my successes, but I am sure that if I hadn’t been cast in two lifechanging roles, I’d still find purpose and meaning in the pursuit of success on my own terms,” Liu wrote.
“[The company] destroyed a life that I was building for someone else, so that I could finally begin to build a life for me.”
Liu’s early entrance in acting were bit roles as an extra and even as a stuntman, such as in Pacific
Rim, before he landed a recurring role on television’s Blood and Water.
Second to his venture on the silver screen, Liu was the lead in the critically lauded TV comedy Kim’s Convenience, about a KoreanAmerican family running a convenience store.
Liu’s upcoming projects include Arthur the King, with Mark Wahlberg, and Greta Gerwig’s high-profile Barbie movie, with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. –
Victor