Lucy Liu, a petite, 5-foot-3-inch tall actress, is best known for her larger-than-life roles on the big screen. In many of her films, Lucy plays a high-kicking, sword-wielding action star. If you catch one of her movies, you might see Lucy as one of "Charlie's Angels," fending off bad guys with smooth martial arts moves. Or, you can watch her play a cool-as-ice villain in the "Kill Bill" series. Whatever role she tackles, Lucy is impossible to forget.

However, Lucy was not always as outgoing as she is in her movie and television roles.

In fact, as a child, she was very shy, and did not like to stand out. Growing up in Queens, NY, it was easy to be lost in the multicultural crowd. Indeed, her neighborhood was a melting pot of many different ethnicities and backgrounds. Her mother and father, who were both highly educated in their native China, taught Lucy to speak Mandarin, and encouraged her to pursue a sensible, dependable career. Acting wasn't exactly considered sensible, or dependable.

When Lucy left the bustle of the city to attend college at the University of Michigan, it was a huge culture shock for the young student. For one thing, the city of Ann Arbor was not as crowded, or as diverse as her Queens neighborhood.

Life was also much slower, when compared to the fast-paced life in New York City. Lucy soon found that she enjoyed the calm, and liked standing out from the crowd. Though she was studying for a degree in Asian languages and cultures, she decided to try her hand at acting as one of her extracurricular activities.

During her senior year, she auditioned for the school production of the play "Alice in Wonderland."

The role of Alice, a girl who finds herself in a magical world completely different from the one she had always known, was not unlike what Lucy had experienced in leaving New York City. Sure, there were no talking caterpillars in Ann Arbor, but Lucy could relate to the way Alice felt like a fish out of water in her unfamiliar new surroundings.

However, Lucy didn't try out for the title role. "Alice" (whose look was made famous by the 1951 Disney cartoon) was traditionally played by a blond-haired, blue-eyed actress. Also, this was one of Lucy's first ventures into acting, and she chose to audition for a much smaller role. The producers of the play, however, loved Lucy.

They cast her as Alice—and the play was a hit. This was just the beginning of Lucy's acting career, but she was hooked.

Lucy Liu has gone on to act in many roles not traditionally held by Asian American women. Currently, Lucy is making waves on the small screen playing another non-traditional role: Dr. Watson, on the Sherlock Holmes inspired TV show "Elementary." In the original literature by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dr. John Watson was a man who helped the famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, solve mysteries. Lucy is one of the first women to ever portray this famous sidekick. Not only is this a fun role with lots of action and adventure, but Lucy probably feels right at home in this hit TV series. Most of the filming is done right in her backyard—New York City.