Reflecting on her experience has inspired the actress to advocate for early detection through cancer screening.

Lucy Liu regrets ‘stigma’ of medical visits after false breast cancer diagnosis led to unnecessary surgery

Reflecting on her experience has inspired the actress to advocate for early detection through cancer screening.

By Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2025. Her work has previously appeared on Entertainment Tonight and Popsugar.

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April 20, 2026 4:16 p.m. ET

Lucy Liu in West Hollywood last month. Credit:

Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty

- Lucy Liu reflects on how a breast cancer misdiagnosis at 22 led to an unnecessary surgery.

- "There was not a lot of asking around. Now, I would ask a million questions and I would not be embarrassed about it," the *Rosemead* star tells USA Today of her experience.

- Liu has now teamed up with a pharmaceutical company to advocate for the importance of early detection through cancer screening.

Lucy Liu is looking back on a scary time in her life and how she's now working to advocate for others in the same situation.

In an interview with *USA Today* on Monday, the *Rosemead* star recalled finding a lump in her breast at the age of 22, being diagnosed with breast cancer, and getting scheduled for surgery to remove the lump before she had time to think much beyond the scary news. The actress admitted she agreed to surgery without first cycling through the now-common practices of getting screened or undergoing follow-up tests — including an ultrasound or a mammogram — beforehand.

"There was not a lot of research done behind it," Liu told the outlet as she looked back on the experience decades later. "There was not a lot of asking around. Now, I would ask a million questions and I would not be embarrassed about it."

It was only after she learned that the lump was non-cancerous and the surgery had been unnecessary that Liu learned about routine screening and diagnostic tools. "That's when I really found out how much I didn't know and how I jumped the gun," she added.

Liu in New York last December.

Manny Carabel/Getty

As a child of Chinese immigrants who was born and raised in Queens, N.Y., Liu acknowledged that she faced even more challenges as someone for whom English is a second language. "[The language barrier] can deter communities from seeking medical care," she pointed out. "There's a stigma behind culture sometimes. They don't think that they need to go in… or they don't have somebody there translating for them."

That is part of her reasoning in working with Pfizer on the company's Every Breakthrough Matters campaign, through which Liu can use her platform to raise awareness of the importance of early detection via cancer screening.

Liu told USA Today that she hopes her advocacy will reach people across those language or cultural barriers, and even closer to home with her 10-year-old son Rockwell, to understand that going to the doctor doesn't have to be ominous or complicated.

"There's not this mystery behind it," she explained . "I think people (should) talk about it within their own families or support groups or friend groups and encourage each other to do it. Oftentimes there's no communication about it."

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It represents a step forward for Liu in viewing her misdiagnosis as something other than a negative experience.

"I learned so much from that at an early age... I didn’t just start advocating for my health then, I started advocating for myself, period," she told the outlet.

Liu attends The Asian American Foundation's Awards Dinner in May of last year.

Dia Dipasupil/Getty

Liu shared a similar sentiment when she spoke with PEOPLE about her misdiagnosis earlier this month.

The actress recalled not wanting to push back after being diagnosed with breast cancer, admitting, "Even though my friend had said to get a second opinion, I sort of thought, 'Well, what's the point? The doctor knows what they're talking about.'"

"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," she said of convincing people to undergo regular screening. "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."

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She added, "I feel like a lot of people have been advocating for themselves more and more, and especially for women's health in general. I think [it's] vital, because I don't want to continue to lose people, and I don't want people to feel hurt and lost and scared," she continued. "I want this to be part of their regular regimen: If you can get up every single day and work out, this is something you do just once or twice a year for yourself, and it is really critical."

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