Hollywood star Lucy Liu has opened up about being wrongly diagnosed with cancer in the 1990s and undergoing unnecessary surgery to remove ‘cancerous tissue’Daniel Bird Assistant Celebrity and Entertainment Editor
22:30, 11 Apr 2026
Lucy said she never questioned her medical practitioner (Image: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Lucy Liu has candidly revealed her harrowing medical ordeal, during which she received an incorrect cancer diagnosis and subsequently underwent an unwarranted surgical procedure. The 57-year-old Hollywood luminary first captured audiences’ attention in the acclaimed FOX drama Ally McBeal, starring Calista Flockhart, back in 1997.
Her transition from television to cinema was swift, with the decorated actress securing the coveted part of Alex Munday in the 2000 blockbuster Charlie’s Angels. Yet beneath the glamorous facade, her personal struggles told a different story.
During the 1990s, Liu was confronted with the devastating news of a cancer diagnosis after detecting a lump in her breast. In a new interview, she said: “I didn’t really think too much about it, but it was scary, because at that time, there was less information that was available because we didn’t have the internet.”
Lucy Liu was misdiagnosed with breast cancer in the 1990s(Image: Getty Images for TIME)
The Charlie’s Angel star, who underwent unnecessary surgery, is now campaigning for cancer screening(Image: Corbis via Getty Images)
The mother-of-one said that her doctor “sort of felt the lump and said it was cancer” and she went without “getting screened”, or carrying out additional diagnostic tests. Rather alarmingly, she was “immediately scheduled” for an operation to excise the supposedly malignant tissue.
Liu told People Magazine that she never challenged the doctor’s assessment, trusting that the medical professional understood the situation. It was subsequently discovered that she never actually had the life-threatening illness.
The Hollywood star has joined forces with Pfizer for their Every Breakthrough Matters initiative, which promotes cancer screening to enable early detection. Discussing the campaign, she explained: “It’s not about the fixing, it’s about really understanding what screening is, and about information and advocacy. That’s a really important thing.
“And even though there is so much available to us technologically, a lot of people don’t do it because they don’t want to know if something’s wrong or they’re too busy… [But] as busy as you are, it’s a lifesaving thing because, oftentimes, it’s caught too late, and at that point, you’re basically scrambling to figure out what your resources are,” reports the Express.
This follows the actress’s candid reflection on becoming a mum for the first time in 2015, admitting she “didn’t have a plan” for motherhood. She announced the joyful news on Instagram with a touching photograph cradling her newborn.
Her post read: “Introducing the new little man in my life, my son Rockwell Lloyd Liu. In [red heart emoji].” Following her son’s arrival, the actress revealed she wanted “to change the conversation a little bit” when discussing her forthcoming work.
Lucy told The Cut: “I didn’t want to talk about the next project. I felt like I was reading the same script. I got tired of it. I didn’t want the same dialogue. I’d heard myself say the same things many, many times and just thought, ‘Well, this can’t be what’s next’. It wasn’t enough.”
When discussing becoming a parent, Lucy revealed to the publication that she “didn’t mull over it too much”, explaining: “I didn’t do a lot of research, I just pulled the trigger. I can think myself out of something so easily, but if I think too much, I won’t do it. It’s better for me to feel something and just go for it.”
She added: “A lot of people read books about parenting. I didn’t do any of that. I was like, ‘When the child is here, I’m just going to figure it out’.”
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