The Empress

Oliver Wang interviews legendary Chinese American actress Lisa Lu about her 65-year film career.

By Oliver WangMay 29, 2025

• Film

IN 1982, ARTHUR DONG, then a young documentarian from San Francisco’s Chinatown, needed an actor—not for any on-screen appearance but for their voice. Dong’s eventual Academy Award–nominated short, Sewing Woman, was inspired by the life of his mother, a longtime seamstress, but the film’s titular subject was an amalgam of the immigrant sweatshop workers Dong grew up around. Lorraine Dong, Arthur’s sister, wrote the script. Despite being relatively unknown filmmakers, the Dong siblings had a mutual friend reach out to one of the most accomplished Chinese American actresses of all time: Lisa Lu.

Lu, who on May 5 got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, agreed to take on the role pro bono. As Lorraine Dong explains, Lu was the perfect fit for what she envisioned: “Lisa’s voice [was] refined, unexpected of a tough sewing woman.” Dong noted that Lu’s accentless English and Mandarin also helped break stereotypes, given that the filmmakers didn’t want the monologue spoken in a “typical Hollywood Chinese English that was usually full of parables spoken with a heavy Chinese accent.” As the voice of the sewing woman, Lu spoke for a generation of immigrant women with grace, fortitude, and charm, attributes that have defined Lu’s career, now in its eighth decade.

Lu was already performing movie roles—in a manner of speaking—from the time she was a teenager in 1930s Shanghai. Back then, she worked as a live translator for English-language films screened to Mandarin-speaking audiences. Rather than rotely translate the dialogue, Lu would try to deliver the translated lines within the emotional context of the characters and scenes. In her mind, she says, “I was participating as an actor.”

After Lu and her family moved to Los Angeles, by way of Honolulu, in the mid-1950s, she began to book bit roles in TV shows and movies, starring opposite James Stewart in Daniel Mann’s military drama The Mountain Road (1960), before landing a recurring role as “Hey Girl” on Have Gun – Will Travel, the CBS western series, which lasted from the late ’50s to early ’60s. However, while producers and directors began calling her “One-Take Lisa” for her ability to nail a scene on the first take, her roles were usually small in scope and often based on racist stereotypes.

Lu opted to look for better opportunities in Asia by the late 1960s and began playing more substantive characters in productions out of Hong Kong and Taiwan. She would become one of the most accomplished international actors of her generation, winning three Golden Horse Awards for her acting, including one for playing the title character in the Shaw Brothers production of The Empress Dowager (1975). She would go on to play Empress Dowager Cixi two more times, including a short but memorable role in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor (1987). Meanwhile, she’s the only actor to have appeared in three of the most important Asian American productions in history, beginning in the early 1960s onstage for the musical Flower Drum Song, then cast in 1993 in Wayne Wang’s groundbreaking adaptation of Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club, and, more recently, starring in Jon M. Chu’s 2018 hit film Crazy Rich Asians. No other Asian American actor has enjoyed such a notable career on both sides of the Pacific, and even now, at age 98, Lu continues to seek and land roles. She sat down for this conversation from her home in Laguna Niguel, California.

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OLIVER WANG: You were born in Beijing in 1927, but you spent most of your childhood in Shanghai?

LISA LU: Yes, because of the war with Japan. My family moved from Beijing to Shanghai to stay in the French Concession so that we would not be harmed by the Japanese.

Both your mother, Li Guifen, and especially your godfather, Mei Lanfang, were accomplished Peking opera singers. Were you expected to eventually follow in their footsteps?

My mother thought I didn’t have the talent, the voice for opera singing, and that I was too—how do you say?—dull. She thought, “Just be a scholar because you are very diligent and you will get somewhere, somehow.”

I could see how that would have been rather discouraging advice to get from one’s own parent, but regardless, you clearly didn’t take her advice!

I guess if they think “you are not talented,” then it inspires you to prove that they are wrong.

As a teenager in Shanghai, you got a job at the Grand Theatre, translating English dialogue from mostly Hollywood movies into Chinese. It never even occurred to me that movie theaters would do this since I’m used to subtitles, but I imagine it must have been very challenging work to translate what characters were saying on-screen, in real time. That’s something professional interpreters have to learn how to do, but you were just a teenager then.

That was my happiest time because I got to see a lot of American films that people usually didn’t get to see, and because I was translating, I could act with them. The other translators were just telling [audiences], in a very flat voice, what was happening. When they listened to me, I was participating as an actor. I acted as every character with different voices, different expressions, as if the person was speaking in Chinese.

That’s fascinating. As you’re saying, your act of translation was fundamentally an act of performance since you didn’t just want people to understand the dialogue, you wanted the audience to understand the characters and their state of mind in different scenes.

I really enjoyed that work because I was acting every night as different characters. I never got bored because I could develop new ways of making the translation closer to the characters. People came to the theater to buy tickets to see the movie, and they always said, “We want the performance translated by Lisa Lu.” My mother wasn’t educated in English, and she enjoyed my translations because I put emotion into the role, and I changed my level of tone to suit the [character] as a man or as a woman.

Given your job, you would have sat through the same movies many times. Did you have any favorites back then? The most memorable one was Cover Girl, with Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly. I enjoyed it very much, saw it many, many times. It was [released] in 1944, but by the time it went to China, it was 1945.

Your family managed to survive the turmoil of both the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II by staying in Shanghai, but once the Chinese Civil War broke out, you and your family left mainland China and moved to Honolulu in 1947. How did that happen?

I have a half sister whose husband was a diplomat. They fled to Macau to avoid the war, and after the war, he was appointed consul general in Honolulu. They took me and my mother with them to Honolulu.

What were your impressions of attending college and living on Oahu?

I really enjoyed the warmth of the Chinese community. They treated us very well. I attended the University of Hawaiʻi and worked on my accent. I wanted to speak good English so I took a speech class, and the teacher corrected my accent. The last lesson, he told me, “I’m not going to correct you anymore because if you sound too American, nobody will hire you as an actress of China.”

Does that mean you were already looking for acting opportunities at the time?

Yes, I loved acting. The first job that I got was with a Hollywood company which came to Hawaiʻi to make a film called The Revolt of Mamie Stover, acted by … aiya, what’s her name? Very famous American actor [Jane Russell]. They were asking local people to be supporting actors, and I was chosen. I was so happy. They told me to come next morning with a swimming suit, and I thought I was chosen because I had a good figure. I went in my swimming suit, and they told me, “Go to the beach, far away, sit there.” So I was a little spot on the beach in the movie. That was me.

You met your future husband, Shelling Hwong, in Hawaiʻi as well? Yes, he was a diplomat at the [Chinese] consulate.

You two were married in Hawaiʻi, started your family there, but then in the mid-1950s, you all moved to California, eventually settling in Los Angeles. What prompted the move?

In Hawaiʻi at the time, my husband couldn’t get a good job, and then he found that the [Defense Language Institute] in Monterey, California, was recruiting teachers. He got the job, and later on, I was hired also. He was teaching Cantonese, and I was enlisted as a Mandarin teacher, so both of us had very steady, good jobs as teachers. Then, the situation changed; they didn’t need so many language teachers anymore after the Korean War, so we lost our jobs, and we moved to Los Angeles because we could find better jobs there.

One of your first moves toward acting in Los Angeles was to join the Pasadena Playhouse. Back then, were you more interested in stage, television, or movies?

Oh, I liked them all. As long as I’m acting, I’m happy, because there are different kinds of skills you have to have. That’s why I keep working on my projection for stage acting. I hope that someday, at my age, there’s an old woman’s role that I can play onstage. For movies and television, that’s a different kind of skill. You have to know the camera angle and the lighting and everything.

Your first credited TV and movie roles started in the late 1950s. What do you consider to be your breakthrough role?

I think the first role I got was in China Doll (1958) as a barmaid, so that was the most important break for me. I got my Actors Guild card from that, and from then on, people started noticing that I was a good actress. Sometimes, they didn’t [audition] me; they just requested my appearance in their movie.

You had this strong reputation in Hollywood for nailing your performance on the first take; I read that you received the nickname “One-Take Lisa.” Where did that ability come from?

I don’t know. I was born with it. I guess I have to thank my parents. It’s no effort for me to step into a role and lose myself in that situation and react as the character would react.

Roles for Asian American actors were very limited back then—especially for women—and what roles did exist were often based on very lazy stereotypes. You made it a point to tell people involved in a film if you felt their depiction of a Chinese or Chinese American character wasn’t accurate. That must have taken a lot of courage to do as a young actor.

If I thought a role was not good for the Chinese, I would suggest they change the script to not disgrace the Chinese. I think I offended an actor when I told them that. After I left, she said sarcastically, “Oh, the actor thinks she knows better than the director.” [Laughs.] I didn’t think that was the way I thought. I only presented the facts of what our race would do or would never do.

I imagine that many of the roles you took were still limited in how they portrayed Chinese characters, though.

You have to become the character they wrote. You just do the best to present the moment, what the character is going through, and just deliver the way that the person will feel. That’s the only way you can be truthful to the character, to express what she feels at the moment, in that situation.

But did you ever feel frustrated that there weren’t more diverse or interesting roles for you?

Well, I wish more writers would understand Chinese characters in different situations, different growth environments, to create different kinds of characters. That’s why I enjoyed working in Hong Kong and Taiwan on Chinese films.

I want to return to your work in Asia, but first, when you were working in Hollywood in the 1960s, you would have overlapped with other notable Asian American actors like Keye Luke, Philip Ahn, James Hong, etc. Did you get to know any of them back then? I really enjoyed knowing Keye Luke. He was such a wonderful actor and had such presence onstage. I was working with him on the stage play for Flower Drum Song. It was at a community theater in San Bernardino [an hour east of Los Angeles]. Every day, he would drive us to San Bernardino for the performance. He did us a favor so we didn’t have to drive that long drive. James Hong, he’s very handsome and—how do you say?—very sincere in his portrayals. He and Keye Luke were my favorite actors; whenever I think of them, I feel warm.

How did you find your roles, did you have an agent then?

Bessie Loo was my agent. She was the only agent for Asian [American actors] at the time, so whenever Hollywood productions needed an actor for a Chinese role, they all just called her and she provided all the Asian actors. James Hong and I had Bessie as our agent. She was very frank, very helpful to young people, very kind.

You mentioned earlier that you were able to find roles in the Hong Kong and Taiwan entertainment industries. Where did you start with those opportunities?

The first one was The Arch [by Tang Shu Shuen, 1968]. I was fortunate to be in that film, acting in Chinese. That’s when the Shaw Brothers noticed my talent, and later, I worked with the Shaws on many films.

You won your first Golden Horse Award for Best Leading Actress for playing the lead in The Arch. How did you land that role? Did Tang seek you out for it?

She did not approach me. I knew she was going to direct this film, so I went to her and introduced myself and told her, “I don’t want any salary”—because that was her first film, she didn’t have money. But because I had no name then, she didn’t take me. She went to Li Li-hua, who was very famous, but Li Li-hua didn’t want to work with her because she had no experience, no money, and refused to take the role. And she went to three more actors. She came back to me after she failed to get all the famous actresses, and I told her, “I want money too. I don’t want to work for free for you [anymore].” I think one of her supporters donated money to pay me.

You mentioned the Shaw Brothers. Throughout the 1970s, you worked with them on numerous occasions, including on The 14 Amazons (1972), which netted your second acting award. What was it like working within the Shaw Brothers’ famous production machine?

I really enjoyed working there. The environment with all the actors, directors, and all the skilled workers, everybody’s in one place. The Shaw Brothers had a dormitory for all the workers, so we got to be together. All my neighbors were either directors or technical workers. It was a wonderful experience.

More so than many Asian American actors I can think of, you were able to find consistent, notable work in both the United States and Asia. Why was it important for you to land roles in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, and so on?

I am Chinese, so working in Hollywood is me working in a different country. I was so happy to return to my own ancestral land, and my Chinese is perfect and very, very typically Mandarin. I enjoy performing in my own country, my own language.

That makes sense, but I’m wondering then, do you identify more as a Chinese or Chinese American actress?

I don’t know the difference. No matter where I am, in China or in America, I’m just an actress. I mean, every role I played, in a play, in a movie, or in a television show, I tried to play the person from the character’s background. Where the character is from makes a difference, not where I am.

With all the roles you played in both the US and Asia in the 1970s and ’80s, how did you choose which projects you starred in?

Oh, I valued all the offers I received. The offers were seldom; I very rarely had two offers at the same time. There was very little chance for me to choose if a job was offered to me.

I understand; you took whatever work was available. And yet, you still landed some impressive roles, perhaps none more so than playing Empress Dowager Cixi, beginning with The Empress Dowager in 1975, produced by the Shaw Brothers. That was a very big character to take on, especially given Cixi’s stature in modern Chinese history. Was this a role you specifically sought out or were you sought out for it?

[Director] Li Han-hsiang didn’t want to hire me; he wanted Li Li-hua, a very good actress and very suited for the role, but she asked for too much money. The Shaw Brothers didn’t want to pay that kind of money, and they realized I had ability and I didn’t ask for much because I enjoyed working. So the Shaw Brothers wanted to use me, but Li Han-Hsiang despised me—he thought he could get rid of me, then he still could use Li Li-hua. For some scenes, he made me act the scene 15 times. He thought I would become intolerant of his treatment. I didn’t want to be treated like this, with no respect, but every time he said “do it again,” I did it different ways, 15 different ways, and he used the first take. Later on, he changed and told me, “I was lucky that you’re very good.” We became very good friends.

Evidently, he wasn’t aware of your reputation as One-Take Lisa! Things clearly worked out since he cast you again as the Empress Dowager in The Last Tempest (1976), and then, in 1987, you were cast to play the Empress Dowager once again, but this time for Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor. How did that role happen?

Bertolucci, I saw him at a Japanese film festival. I said, “You were in China so long; how come you haven’t started filming?” And he said, “I can’t find an old lady to play the Empress Dowager, because that’s a very important scene, the opening scene, and I couldn’t find the actor to do it.” So I told him, “You don’t need an old woman to play the character, you need a good actress to play the character. I’ll come to Hong Kong, and I’ll do one scene for you. If you think it’s satisfactory, good. If you don’t think it’s good, then no harm done, I’ll leave.” After he saw my performance, we started filming the next morning.

Given your prominence, especially playing lead roles in Hong Kong and Taiwan films, were you ever recognized on the street?

In a restaurant in Taiwan, they recognized me as Guan Shi Yin Pu Sha because I was in a television show [Guan Shi Yin, 1975], portraying the goddess of mercy. When I went to the restaurant, they never wanted to charge me anything, so I hesitated to go there because they wouldn’t accept my payment.

During all this, you were still working in the United States, and in 1982, you volunteered to be the narrator in Arthur Dong’s documentary short Sewing Woman. You were very well established by that point; he was basically an unknown filmmaker from San Francisco’s Chinatown. Why were you willing to take on the role, especially pro bono?

I had a friend who recommended me. He said, “Oh, this young person [Dong] is talented, would you help do the voice-over for him?” I said, “Of course.” He was a very young, talented artist at the time, and I tried to help him without charging anything.

I don’t know how much they explained the role to you at the time, but as narrator, you were essentially telling the story of not just one person, but really an entire community of immigrant Chinese working women. Did you approach your narration from that perspective?

I didn’t think so much of it at the time; I was just trying to interpret what the “sewing woman” really feels when she’s speaking.

I read that you used your connections in both Asia and the US to help Chinese actresses like Gong Li and Joan Chen navigate their way into Hollywood. Why was that important for you?

In those days, my home was in Hollywood, and I welcomed them to come and prepared Chinese meals for them, anything I could do for them, because I understood they were away from home. They’re all very talented actors and actresses, and I think Chinese actors and industry people deserve to be recognized by the world because they are top-notch artists in their field. I wanted to do my best to introduce them to the West, and also to have people understand that the standard of their field [in China] is no less than the world standard.

I know this is a very broad question, but because you have had such a long career and you have seen the roles and the characters available to Asian actors in Hollywood change over that time, I’m wondering: what do you see as being the opportunities available now that maybe didn’t exist when you were auditioning back in the 1960s?

Well, the world now is a different kind of world. Many years ago, Chinese ways, our experiences, were not really appreciated. People didn’t have the understanding. But now, communications are so different from before, so Chinese culture is understood more by American actors. I think we have better opportunities now to present ourselves on the screen.

If I’m not mistaken, you’re the only actor to have appeared in both Joy Luck Club and Crazy Rich Asians, two of the most prominent Asian American productions of the past 30 years. Let’s start with Joy Luck Club, which may have been your first time working with an Asian American director: how did you end up playing the role of An-Mei in that film?

I did the reading when the play first appeared, at the Mark Taper Forum. Wayne Wang said that if he had known how old I was, he wouldn’t have cast me.

Because he thought you were too old to play the role?

I don’t know. I felt so ridiculous that he thought I was too old.

What was your experience like during the production, especially surrounded by all these other Asian American actors?

Oh, it was wonderful to be with all the talent I appreciated, especially France Nuyen. She’s such a wonderful, warm person. To this day, I’m very good friends with France and also Kieu Chinh. I was very fortunate to be cast in that film. It’s a classic for Chinese American films. I value the opportunity given to me.

How about Crazy Rich Asians then, 25 years later? How did you get cast in that film as Ah Ma?

I forgot how I got the role. I used to do stage shows in Berkeley, and [director Jon Chu’s] parents lived in Berkeley. They had a restaurant [Chef Chu’s], and I think he was familiar with my work. Maybe that’s why he cast me, I don’t know.

What stands out to you about working on that film?

It was my first time in Singapore, and I really enjoyed being in the Far East with everyone. I adored Jon; he was a wonderful director. He coordinated all the departments to work together, was very efficient, and made you feel that you wanted to do your best for him.

I was trying to remember if you and Ang Lee had ever worked together and I thought you had not, but then I realized you had a very small role in his 2007 film Lust, Caution, where you’re playing mahjong with several other characters.

That was a very strange experience because I was in Shanghai, it was a cold winter day, and I went to the set to visit him. We both regretted that we hadn’t had a chance to work together, but on that day, they had a scene with four mahjong players, so I said, “I can be one of the mahjong players, then I can be in a movie with Ang Lee.” He created one sentence of dialogue for me.

You must have known Ang fairly well to be visiting him on set to begin with.

I was familiar with his work when he was in university [film school at NYU]. I was doing some work in New York, and he invited me to go see his student work. I realized how talented he was, a genius.

In the early to mid-2010s, you had a recurring role on the long-running American soap opera General Hospital, playing Mrs. Yi, a restaurant proprietor. I believe this was the first time you were ever cast on a soap opera. Why did you want to audition for the show?

With movies, it was seldom that you could get work, and they don’t have [American] movies with Chinese parts very much so television is the only way that you can work often. It was very enjoyable because the turnaround was so fast: they had to finish everything in limited time. So every part, every department, worked together. Everybody was so good.

I imagine that as One-Take Lisa, you worked really well in that kind of environment.

I’m [producers’] favorite actress because I save money for them.

I’m sure many actors have asked you for advice over the years; what do you tell them when they want to understand your approach to the craft?

That the most important thing is to have a healthy body, and healthy spirit to work long hours. Keep yourself interested. And whenever you take a role, you have to study that person’s background in order to react correctly, because different people react to the same thing differently.

There’s a quote from an acceptance speech you gave for a lifetime achievement award in 2018:

It takes more than passion to accomplish a good film. What is more important is always to be a good person before becoming a good actor or filmmaker. It means you should support the truth even when it’s unpopular. It means you should protect your most prized possession in the world, your integrity.

Where did this set of values come from? How did it become important to your personal ethos?

I don’t know how to answer. I think you grow up with your cultural background, your education, your family. You have your associations with different kinds of people who all teach you how to live, how to survive, or how to act as a good person with good intentions, and how to mingle with different people’s cultural backgrounds.

You are in your late nineties and you are still working, I assume, because you want to, not because you feel like you have to. What drives your work ethic?

Work gives me pleasure, to be different characters and to do things I would never be able to do in life.

What would be some examples?

[In Mandarin] Oh, to be a bad person, doing bad things. Or a wealthy person, doing good things. However, I’ve never played a [superhero].

Hey, you never know what might be around the corner for you. It could still happen.

I wish people who look at this interview will think of me. Give me a job. I enjoy working. Working makes me happy.

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Featured image: Photo of Lisa Lu courtesy of Loretta Griffiths/Lisa Lu.