Lucy Liu says playing a "Charlie's Angels" heroine showed her Hollywood was ready to cast her in roles that were not Asian-specific.

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The Chinese-American actress recently recalled asking her TV boss David E. Kelley for time off from her lawyer show, "Ally McBeal," so she could star in the first of two "Charlie's Angels" films.

Explaining how important it is to her to play parts that could be acted by women of any ethnicity, Liu remembered saying to Kelley: "('Charlie's Angels') is not Shakespeare, but it represents something much bigger than that.

"It represents Americana and breaking that mold and without being political and without making a statement, it makes a statement, and (Kelley) really got that," the "Lucky Number Slevin" star told reporters in New York.

"(Kelley) understood what I was saying and he made it happen. It changed things. People don't say, 'Oh my God, you're Asian and you're a Charlie's angel.' They just say, 'You're a Charlie's angel,' and it's so nice because all the kids now know that as a given. ... They don't need to prove anything. It's just what it is. And that, to me, makes me feel good because I know growing up, for me, I did not have that."