Simu Liu may have found instant Hollywood stardom after starring as Marvel’s first Asian superhero in Shang-Chi, but he once posed for stock photos!
After earning rave reviews for his performance in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, a sleeper hit for Marvel, Simu Liu found himself in the headlines for something other than his big hit – his stock photos from back in the days!
He even joined in on the viral trend after his film opened to a record-breaking $94 million four-day Labor Day weekend, with a stock photo of himself pointing at the screen and “laughing at the people who thought we’d flop.”
Me laughing at the people who thought we’d flop pic.twitter.com/7UoLqRXlCJ
— Simu Liu (@SimuLiu) September 6, 2021
Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Friday, Sept. 11, Simu Liu opened up about the photos, saying, “If you’re a nice model, you get paid thousands of dollars, you walk the runway… if you’re a stock model, you get paid typically a base rate of a one-day shoot of $100.”
He also explained that the company owns the rights to the photos they take “in perpetuity” which essentially means that the rights never run out and they can use them whenever – even if the person becomes a big Hollywood star!
“They could sell these photos and make millions and millions of dollars off of them, and the talent will not make a single penny. That’s what happened to me,” Liu shared.
Lui’s Sept. 7 tweet has since gone viral on the microblogging app, with more than 300k likes, including a reply from the stock photo company he posed for! iStock replied to the picture saying, “We always believed in you, @simuliu. And if being a superhero doesn’t work out, our door is always open.”
In a cheeky yet befitting reply, Liu called them out saying that he never made money on the photos. “Is the door open to share in the hundreds of thousands of $$ you made off those photos cause I was paid a hundred bucks,” he said.
Shang-Chi stars Simu Liu as Marvel’s newest superhero, a former assassin in the shadow of an evil father. It also features Awkwafina, Tony Leung and Michelle Yeoh.
Is the door open to share in the hundreds of thousands of $$ you made off those photos cause I was paid a hundred bucks
— Simu Liu (@SimuLiu) September 7, 2021
