Quotes from Simu Liu

Who you seen on screen shapes who you are.

I would do background and extra stuff, I would do student films, I just found every opportunity I could to be on set, and after awhile I accumulated enough work to get an agent.

I've always just been such a big fan of the MCU and anything Marvel, really.

Because I think it's so easy to look at someone, regardless of where they grew up, where they came from, the language that they speak, to just look at the colour of their skin and all of a sudden reduce them to harmful stereotypes.

A superhero represents infinite possibility. It represents the peak of aspiration and courage. And if you see yourself reflected as a superhero, you will give yourself permission to dream anything.

I loved superhero movies growing up.

I kind of love being a superhero.

It does feel like we get to just carte blanche create a superhero origin story for 2021, for this day and age, that is told through a distinctly Asian American lens.

Obviously, learning the martial arts is a big part of my training, but the other part of being a Marvel superhero is, well, looking like a superhero.

Just because there's one Asian American superhero in the MCU, it does not by any means imply that our fight is finished right there.

If I were to fight one Marvel superhero, I think I would fight Captain America. We would start all aggressive and then both realise how much we liked and respected one another. We would be friends.

The first time I tried on Shang-Chi's superhero suit - Marvel has never had an Asian lead, so that was such a rare and impactful moment, for me as an actor but also for people who look like me. I nearly cried. It was so emotional.

Being a Marvel superhero has always been a dream of mine. And so I think every choice that I made in my career, every step that I took, brought me to that point.

I loved Spider-Man, Superman, Batman, but I was always keenly aware that people who looked like me could not look like that.

Hawkeye is the best 'Avenger' because he does not rely on superpowers or extraordinary abilities.

We've seen a million versions of the Peter Parker radioactive-spider origin story. We've seen Thomas and Martha Wayne at the opera... over and over again in movies and media, and I think we're ready for something new.

Asian men specifically have not been portrayed as the leading man or sex symbol.

Shrimp crackers are actually exactly what I was eating when I got the call that I was going to play Shang-Chi.

It's hard enough to celebrate being Asian in normal times. But now, when the whole world is kind of coming down, with all this rhetoric and people getting attacked on the street, you really need to deliberately try to celebrate Asian-ness.

I've always had a bit of delusional confidence.

The truth is that Asian people have been targeted and discriminated against for far, far longer than COVID has been around.

You know, the squeaky wheel gets the oil, and my parents had spent a lifetime not making any noise, and I was like, what happens if I do this? What happens if I rock this? What then, you know? Will anybody listen?

And so it became a priority for me to make sure that all Asian Canadians or Asian Americans or wherever you are, Asian Australians, felt like they belonged.

I feel like it's a bit of a misconception that all actors have to be expert martial artists if they're Asian.