Lucy Liu, Three Needles

Timed for World AIDS Day, Thom Fitzgerald's
3 Needles is an ambitious independent film that highlights this epidemic's global impact in three segments. In Montreal, Stockard Channing is a resourceful, desperate mother whose son (Shawn Ashmore of X-Men 3) has infected his porn movie leading ladies. In Africa, Olympia Dukakis, Chloe Sevigny, and Sandra Oh are nuns in a coastal mission caring for AIDS orphans. Queens-born Lucy Liu (Charlie's Angels, TV's Ally McBeal) stars in the Mandarin-language segment as an impoverished, expectant mother who unknowingly has HIV and is killing villagers as she labors in the illegal blood market with infected needles. Liu, a UNICEF volunteer, tells us how, with Fitzgerald's blessing, she was able to dramatically change her character and her continuing work to escape Hollywood Asian-American stereotyping.

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