Lucy Liu Is 57 Now — Inside the 'Charlie's Angels' Star's Life as a Single Mom & Her Manhattan Home — Photos

Lucy Liu is 57 now, decades after becoming a household name. Away from her famous action roles, her life in New York has taken some unexpected turns.

The "Charlie's Angels" star is raising her son as a single mother while maintaining another career that began long before some fans knew her name.

And behind the familiar face seen on red carpets today is a private Manhattan life built around motherhood, art, and a city Liu deliberately chose as home.

Lucy Liu's Life Looks Different Away From 'Charlie's Angels'

For millions of moviegoers, Lucy Liu remains closely associated with Alex Munday, one of the three crime-fighting leads of "Charlie's Angels."

She also became known for playing O-Ren Ishii in "Kill Bill: Volume 1" and Ling Woo in "Ally McBeal." Her television work later included seven seasons of "Elementary."

But Liu's public identity tells only part of the story. On her Instagram profile, she describes herself simply as: "Mother. Actress. Artist. Sometimes Sword Wielder."

The order is notable because motherhood has occupied an increasingly visible place in the life Liu discusses publicly. Liu welcomed her only child, Rockwell Lloyd, through gestational surrogacy on August 27, 2015.

She was in her 40s and had spent years balancing an intense acting schedule. According to People, Liu said in 2016 that surrogacy made sense because she was working and did not know when she would be able to stop.

"It just seemed like the right option for me because I was working and I didn't know when I was going to be able to stop," she said. Liu said she cried when Rockwell was born.

She also spoke in support of families that do not follow one traditional model, saying that what mattered was how families love and connect with one another.

Rockwell is now 11. Yet his mother's decades of Hollywood fame apparently carries considerably less weight at home than another skill.

Her Son Knows Her as Mom, Not a Hollywood Action Star

In a 2025 People interview, Liu joked that Rockwell "does not know how cool" she is. What he did know, she said, was that his mother could make a "killer piece of chicken" and heat up lasagna — what she called basic mom duties.

At the time of that interview, Rockwell had barely seen his mother's live-action work. Liu said the first, and possibly only, live-action movie of hers he had watched was the 2024 Christmas film "Red One."

Rockwell was nine when he saw it and initially had to get past some of its scarier creatures. Her son has therefore grown up with a very different version of Lucy Liu from the sword-wielding and high-kicking star familiar to audiences.

Liu called Rockwell her "greatest teacher" and said she hoped he was proud of her. Motherhood was not something she approached with an elaborate plan.

When The Cut asked Liu in 2023 about becoming a mother in her late 40s through surrogacy, she said she had reached a point where talking about another acting project no longer felt like enough.

She did not spend a long time researching the decision or reading parenting books. Instead, she said she would figure out parenting once her child arrived. That choice also brought her back to the city where her own story began.

She Chose New York for Her Son

Liu was raised in Queens by Chinese immigrant parents and later spent about a decade living in Los Angeles. But when it came to raising Rockwell, she wanted New York.

She told The Cut that Los Angeles felt too divided into separate "pods" — home, car, and work — while New York exposed people to everyday life around them.

For Liu, that exposure was something she specifically wanted her son to experience. She said New York children encounter the city directly and learn what is safe and what is not through experience.

"They're going to smell the smells," she said. Her decision also meant raising Rockwell without organizing her life around the expectation that marriage had to come first.

Liu has spoken openly about being single and said she has been proposed to. Marriage, however, has never been an item she felt obligated to check off.

In a 2021 Women's Health interview, she said she did not have to follow the social expectation that marriage must come next. "Marriage is not on my bucket list. I don't have a bucket list," she said.

Two years later, Liu again said she had never lived according to what was supposed to happen next. As a single mother, she has also identified one practical difference in raising a child alone.

Speaking to Today Parents in 2022, Liu said it could sometimes be easier because she did not have to negotiate another parent's opinion. She added, with characteristic bluntness, that sometimes another parent could behave more like a toddler than the child.

The Story Behind Rockwell's Name

Even Rockwell's distinctive name came from an ordinary moment. Liu told Today that she was working on location when she spotted a store named Rockwell. She liked the name and kept it in mind.

She acknowledged that people sometimes pointed out that Rockwell was traditionally a surname, but said she felt surnames could be stronger than first names. Her son also made his own preference clear early.

When someone called him Rocky at age four, Liu recalled him correcting the person: "My name is Rockwell." Some of the routines mother and son share are similarly simple.

Liu said they have a tradition at the kitchen table of discussing their favorite part of the day and what they are grateful for. In the morning, she asks Rockwell whether he had any dreams.

Those small routines became especially prominent during the pandemic, when Liu suddenly spent far more time at home. Before then, her work schedule could take her out of the house before Rockwell woke at 6 a.m.

She had spent so much time in production trailers that her young son would see one on the street and call it "Mommy's trailer!" Liu said he thought she lived there.

The pandemic changed that rhythm. Mother and son ate, read, drew, and even took ukulele lessons together while Liu remained rooted in her Manhattan apartment.

The change allowed Rockwell to see both the apartment and his mother as fixtures of home rather than having her routinely leave for a set before he woke. And the home itself had already undergone another important change after his arrival.

Inside Her Manhattan Life

Before Rockwell was born, Liu used her Manhattan apartment as an art workspace as well as a home. That arrangement changed after she became a mother.

By 2019, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Liu was living in Manhattan with Rockwell while using a separate studio at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City. She later worked from an airy Manhattan art studio, which she showed The Cut in 2023.

Liu described that studio modestly as "nothing fancy." At the time, boxes remained in the recently occupied space. A ladder doubled as a place to hang coats, while a workbench held a dark, angular sculpture roughly the size of an overnight suitcase.

Stacks of plastic bins were carefully labeled. There was even a newly installed slop sink squeezed into the small studio bathroom — a practical detail in a space devoted to making art rather than displaying Hollywood memorabilia.

That studio should not be confused with Liu's private Manhattan residence. The supplied sources describe the apartment as the home she shares with Rockwell and document the separate spaces she has used for her artwork over the years.

The available images offer another visual look at the surroundings associated with Liu's New York life, revealing a side of the star far removed from the glossy sets of "Charlie's Angels." Yet the most revealing part of those surroundings may be what Liu has been creating inside them.

Her Other Career Started When She Was 15

Liu's career as a visual artist is not a recent celebrity side project. According to her official art biography, she began experimenting with photography and collage at Stuyvesant High School in New York when she was 15.

She later attended the University of Michigan, graduating in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in Asian Languages and Culture. After college, Liu moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting, but art continued alongside it.

Her first solo exhibition, "Unraveling," opened at New York's Cast Iron Gallery in 1993. The photographic exhibition earned her a grant to study at Beijing Normal University.

Her time in China gave Liu an opportunity to learn more about her Chinese heritage while expanding her ideas about what art could represent. That experience later became the basis of work shown in "Catapult," her solo exhibition at Los Angeles' Purple Gallery in the 1990s.

While living in Los Angeles, Liu continued working with collage and photographic portraiture. After returning to New York, she studied painting at the New York Studio School from 2004 to 2007.

Her work eventually expanded across painting, sculpture, collage, silkscreen, and constructions made with discarded objects. Some of her recurring subjects include security, salvation, relationships, and the ways personal experiences affect people physically and emotionally.

Long before many fans knew about that career, however, Liu had taken an unusual step to keep her Hollywood identity separate from her artwork.

She Exhibited Under Another Name

Liu initially displayed her art under her Chinese name, Yu Ling. She told The Hollywood Reporter that doing so provided a form of protection and allowed viewers to approach the work without immediately filtering it through their knowledge of Lucy Liu the actress.

She eventually began exhibiting as Lucy Liu in 2011. By then, the art career had already developed far beyond a private hobby. Her work has appeared in galleries, museums, and art fairs in the United States and internationally, including exhibitions in Singapore, Shanghai, London, Germany, Finland, and Canada.

The Hollywood Reporter reported in 2019 that her dealer, Daniel Chen, said her pieces generally sold for between $10,000 and $50,000. One of Liu's long-running projects, "Lost and Found," began in 2012 and used objects other people might throw away.

Bottle caps, soda can tabs, pieces of wire, and other sidewalk finds became part of handmade works using discarded books. That interest had roots stretching all the way back to Liu's childhood.

Growing up in Jackson Heights, Queens, she collected pieces of concrete from a nearby construction site. One of her most treasured finds was an abandoned hubcap. The habit of finding potential value in discarded things continued into adulthood.

The Hollywood Reporter reported that Liu would even save scraps such as banana peels and pits while away from home, wrapping them up and carrying them back to compost. Her "Lost and Found" work remained active years later, appearing at FOG Design + Art in San Francisco in 2025.

Some of Her Most Personal Art Began With Family Photographs

Liu's artwork has also dealt directly with family, the body, and mortality. In her studio in 2019 were three large nude paintings. Beneath at least one of those works was an earlier image based on an old family photograph.

Liu explained that her father was seriously ill when she began transferring old family pictures onto canvas. Unsatisfied with the initial paintings, she began painting loosely over them. The works transformed into large nude and sexual images.

Her father died in October 2017. Liu said she had not returned to those works afterward. Her figurative paintings also drew on her upbringing in a home where sex and nudity were taboo.

At one point, according to The Hollywood Reporter, a dealer suggested cutting parts of the canvases to remove exaggerated genital imagery and make the pieces more commercially acceptable.

Liu refused. The episode connected two sides of her public life: an actress who had faced stereotyping and objectification, and an artist unwilling to alter work simply to make it easier to sell.

Her Relationship With Her Body Changed With Age

Liu has spoken about growing up with little comfort discussing the body. In her Women's Health interview, she described the cultural boundaries of her childhood as a "shield."

As a mother, she said she wanted Rockwell to have a more open understanding of his body, including using proper anatomical terms rather than shame-based substitutes. Her own relationship with health also changed as she grew older.

At 52, Liu said being healthy for her son had become especially important. She had followed a vegan diet for nearly a year before becoming vegetarian.

She said she ate cheese and eggs with Rockwell because he liked sharing food, while her acupuncturist had also suggested adding eggs back into her diet.

Her meals included savory quinoa porridge and soup made with ingredients such as red dates, lotus root, and lion's mane mushrooms. Liu also said she combined Western medicine with practices including acupuncture and muscle response testing.

Transcendental Meditation was part of her daily routine. At the time, she exercised on an at-home SoulCycle bike for 20 minutes and followed that with about 10 minutes of arm work.

By 2023, however, Liu said she had stopped attending SoulCycle and was doing Pilates. Her decision to appear on the Women's Health cover at 52 also came with a pointed message about age. "You don't have to be 20 to wear a bathing suit," she said.

What Lucy Liu Looks Like Now

More than two decades have passed since Liu appeared opposite Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore in "Charlie's Angels." Now 57, Liu remains immediately recognizable, with her dark hair and familiar features still prominent in recent public appearances.

Recent photographs show her years removed from the sleek costumes and action sequences that helped define her early-2000s image, but still regularly stepping onto major red carpets.

Her public appearances have included events connected to "Red One" and fashion and beauty engagements. The pictures also underline the gap between the Hollywood image many viewers remember and the day-to-day role Rockwell knows best.

At home, according to Liu, her son is more familiar with her cooking than her action-star credentials. That divide appears to suit the structure of her life: acting remains part of it, but it is no longer the only part visible to the public.

Hollywood Never Completely Went Away

Although Liu may be less associated with a single blockbuster franchise today, she did not stop working. Her post-"Charlie's Angels" credits span television, movies, voice work, directing, and major franchises.

"Elementary" became one of her longest commitments, with Liu playing Joan Watson for seven seasons. By the end of that run, however, the demands of network television had become difficult to reconcile with having a young child.

Liu described the workload of leading an hour-long network drama as a marathon and said in 2019 that she could not imagine taking on that kind of journey again anytime soon. She subsequently joined Marc Cherry's dark comedy "Why Women Kill."

In 2023, she entered the superhero world as Kalypso in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods," appearing alongside Helen Mirren and Rachel Zegler. She followed that with "Red One" in 2024 — the movie that became Rockwell's first major live-action introduction to his mother's screen career.

More recently, Liu starred in the drama "Rosemead," playing an ailing mother trying to protect her troubled teenage son. The role arrived at a point when her own identity as a mother had become central to the way she spoke about her life outside acting.

Yet even as her career has moved across genres, Liu has said she does not choose roles simply because audiences already know her for a certain type of character. She told Women's Health that limiting herself to action movies could eventually leave her disconnected from who she was.

Her Work Outside Hollywood Reaches Back Decades

Art is not Liu's only long-running commitment outside acting. She has served as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2004. Her first UNICEF trip that year took her to Lesotho, where she witnessed children living amid large amounts of garbage.

Liu later connected that experience with the ideas behind "Lost and Found" and with questions about what people notice, discard, or choose not to see. Her civic voice also became more public during the rise in anti-Asian violence surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2021, Liu spoke about racist language and its consequences, arguing that words can help create conditions in which people feel permitted to act on anger. She also said the attacks changed the way she navigated New York with Rockwell.

Despite being born and raised in the city and deliberately choosing it as the place to raise her son, Liu said she no longer felt comfortable taking him out without a plan. She had previously valued the ability to explore New York spontaneously.

The attacks, she said, changed that sense of freedom for her and many others. Liu also began speaking more publicly about voting and the importance of Asian American civic participation. It marked another expansion of a public identity that had already moved far beyond the roles that first made her famous.

Rockwell Still Has Some Catching Up to Do

For all the roles that made Liu recognizable around the world, one person at home has seen surprisingly little of them. As of 2025, Rockwell had watched little of his mother's live-action work beyond "Red One."

Liu joked that her son "does not know how cool" she is, even if he appreciates the chicken and lasagna she can put on the table. That leaves plenty for him to discover about the woman he simply knows as Mom.

For Liu, however, motherhood has already provided its own education. Speaking about Rockwell, she called him her "greatest teacher" and said, "I've never learned so much in such a short period of time."