By Jenny Halper in New York City

Lucy Liu might be best known for, well, less than friendly roles (“Kill Bill,” “Ally McBeal”), but she breaks the ice-queen barrier in “Lucky Number Slevin.” The actress stars alongside Ben Kingsley, Morgan Freedman, and Josh Hartnett, playing Lindsey, Hartnett’s plucky next door neighbor and love interest.

Last week, Liu took time to talk to press about community pressure, working for Unicef, and her latest film.

Q: Are you at all like Lindsey?

LUCY: There’s a molecule in your body of whoever you play. She is someone who talks quickly and is energetic, that’s the way her mind thinks. And she’s also very smart, she’s a coroner and she sees people come in and she’s got to figure out how they die, she’s got to break down, figure out what’s happened to them, what was their cause of death. That’s just how she is, she’s programmed that way. She’s very much a free spirit.

Q: Ben Kingsley said he loved your style.

LUCY: I paid him a lot of money to say that. A lot more than the movie did. And I think his rhythm is really dynamic too. He has his own music, his own punctuation, and I think we both have a very dry sense of humor. I always like to bring a sense of lightness to a character even if she’s not meant to have that.

Q: He (Kingsley) said you should play Cleopatra…you had to say the most words without taking a breath.

LUCY: That’s how I got the part. They put me under water and saw how long I could last. First of all, in the script originally, she did not have that many words. She sort of came in and did her thing and then left. But as people started coming on Jason (Smilovic) started writing for all the different actors. And when we were about to start shooting, I read the script, and it was completely different, the role is monologues of things that she’s talking about which don’t even mean anything. And the dialogue is word for word. It’s not improvised. So the way that Jason thinks is pretty amazing. She has a rhythm to her language that I really enjoyed.

Q: Was the sex scene fun or nerve-wracking?

LUCY: It was great. We were both really relaxed, we really had great chemistry together, we both like each other a great deal…it seems so intimate onscreen, but you’re surrounded by a hundred people, so it didn’t feel at the time, till you see it onscreen, that it was so intimate. We were having fun, we were playing a game in bed.

Q: Had you met Josh before?

LUCY: No. We met in December, and we read the script together and then Paul showed us an idea of what the set was going to look like, he wanted us to know so we could use the space, there were a lot of entrances, exits, etc. And the next time I saw him we were shooting.

Q: With “Kill Bill” and “Ally McBeal,” did you feel like you were typecast in villainous roles?

LUCY: Everyone thinks that, but I don’t feel that way. I never felt like the roles I was playing were villainous. If you think about her past, her parents were killed, she had no choice but to seek revenge, and once you’re in that position you have to continue being in that position. But she was never gonna die peacefully. She was going to be murdered. So to me, that was her fate. And she was a survivor, she had to continue that journey. So I always see the characters as very heartfelt, even if people might perceive them as more villainous. Somebody just asked me what was the most pivotal thing in my career, and I said “Ally McBeal.”

Q: I read that you didn’t always want to act.

LUCY: I thought about it for a long, long time but it wasn’t really feasible. Because it was more about education, that was the only way to get anywhere in this life- for my parents, basically. But they also came over to America for school, it makes sense, my family is very much into an education, my sister and my brother.

Q: How do your parents feel about it now?

LUCY: I think my parents are happier now about it. They’re accepting now of it. It’s a little easier for them to now worry about me and what’s going to happen to me. Originally I was like, why don’t you support whatever I want to do, if I wanted to like sell beef on the street, why wouldn’t you want to support me? But it’s not about that. I think they worry about what’s going to happen when they’re not around. Parents never stop being parents I don’t think. And you want them to be your friends at a certain age and it’s not going to happen.

Q: They must be proud of the Ambassador work you’ve done for Unicef.

LUCY: They’re the most proud of that Unicef work. My mother is very much into charity, she’s always volunteering- she works full time as well- but she volunteers all of her spare time, and I think that’s the most impressed that she is. Which tells you a lot about her character. It’s something I always wanted to do, I always wanted to work with children. So that has been the most beneficial to my life. Even if I wasn’t working in this industry, I would be involved in that at some point.

Q: Were you nervous about going overseas?

LUCY: No. You go to Pakistan, you fly through Baghdad, you go to Africa. I don’t really think about what could be. If you think too much about it you end up not doing anything at all. And if I step off a curb and get hit by a car, I have no regrets. I don’t look back and go, “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Q: In terms of your career, when did your parents relax?

LUCY: I don’t know. It might have been by the sequel of “Charlie’s Angels.” Who knows if they feel relaxed about it now. They’re like, “are you working?” I’m like “No.” I mean, you just don’t know. You’ll work three movies in a year and then you won’t work. To me it’s not – I don’t go around spending my money like water. I think they know that as well, but are still concerned. But for them, you have to be working every single way. Otherwise you don’t really have a job.

Q: When choosing roles, do you have to be sensitive to the Asian American community?

LUCY: I think that I chose roles for myself. If I start thinking outside of myself and trying to choose roles for other people and fulfill what they would like in their specific individual lives, I think you get lost. You can do that for a certain amount of time, and ten years down the line you’ll look at yourself and you won’t even know who you are. You’ve made choices for everyone else. And if you’ve made choices, you should take responsibility for those choices. If other people encourage you to do something, like the Asian American community writes me a letter and says “you really should do this role,” and I do it, it either succeeds or it flops, it doesn’t matter. If I don’t feel connected to it, it’s going to show.

Q: So you never feel pressured?

LUCY: Nobody’s thrown any chopsticks at me recently. There’s always something to criticize. People do that as well, build you up to tear you down. So I don’t read any magazines, I have no subscriptions; I don’t channel that energy because I think it’s just a ton of animosity. And if you look at magazines as well it gets confusing. Who doesn’t want to look fabulous? But I’m not going to put my house on display anytime soon. I’m not going to be posing on my couch. There’s a certain amount of privacy I like to hold on to.

“Lucky Number Slevin” opens on April 7th.