Touchstone\/Courtesy Everett <\/p>\n
Lucy Liu as Princess Pei Pei in ‘Shanghai Noon’<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
Lucy Liu<\/a> needed to be rescued in Shanghai Noon<\/em><\/a>. But behind the scenes, she was itching to learn some of the hero’s moves herself.<\/p>\n Seizing the opportunity to learn from an action superstar, Liu had asked her Shanghai Noon <\/em>castmate Jackie Chan to teach her stunts. The Rush Hour<\/em> actor, who had an entire stunt crew helping him, declined.<\/p>\n “He’s like, ‘No, no, no, you don’t get to do anything. I don’t want you to get hurt,'” Liu said in a video<\/a> reviewing her “Life in Looks” for Vogue.<\/em><\/p>\n SGranitz\/WireImage<\/p>\n Owen Wilson, Lucy Liu, and Jackie Chan during the ‘Shanghai Noon’ premiere<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Instead, Chan’s team taught Liu how to juggle, which baffled her. She admitted she “wasn’t coordinated enough” to do it successfully, which may have been a sign of her readiness to take on more intense stunt work.<\/p>\n “Maybe that was their test to see if I could actually handle knives and other things,” Liu said.<\/p>\n Still, the Rosemead<\/em> actress is no shrinking violet when it comes to stunts. Following the East-meets-West western comedy, she went on to wield some serious weapons in action franchises like Charlie’s Angels<\/a> <\/em>and Kill Bill<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our\u00a0EW Dispatch newsletter<\/a>. Touchstone\/Courtesy Everett <\/p>\n Owen Wilson and Jackie Chan in ‘Shanghai Noon’<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n In fact, her role as Princess Pei Pei in Shanghai Noon<\/em> is what led her to play assassin O-Ren Ishii in the Kill Bill <\/em>films. Liu said Quentin Tarantino wrote the part for her after watching her performance in the 2000 western.<\/p>\n “He said, ‘Your role as Princess Pei Pei, like, it really moved me and it really connected me with you,'” Liu said.<\/p>\n The actress took Tarantino’s offer and even had a part in shaping<\/a> her Kill Bill <\/em>character’s look. She previously shared how she took inspiration from the simplicity of Vincent Vega’s (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield’s (Samuel L. Jackson) crisp white shirts and black ties.<\/p>\n<\/div>
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