Marvel star Simu Liu was fired from Deloitte: ‘You destroyed a life,’ he tells ex boss

Actor Simu Liu has opened up about being fired from Deloitte a decade ago (Image credit: simuliu/Instagram)

Actor Simu Liu has thanked his former boss at Deloitte for firing him a decade ago, saying that being laid off changed the trajectory of his life.

The China-born Canadian actor went from an accounting job at Deloitte to becoming the first Asian superhero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In a note shared on Instagram on April 12 -- the 10-year anniversary of the day he was let go -- Liu thanked his former boss for firing him.

“Ten years ago to the day, I was lead into my managing partner’s office at Deloitte and told that they were terminating my employment effective immediately,” he wrote. As he was escorted out of office premises, Liu recalled, he fought back tears of humiliation.

“Ten years ago I thought my life was over,” the actor wrote. He added that “years of schooling, gifted programs, trying to live up to my parents’ expectations. It all came crashing down in an instant.”

He went on to describe where life took him in the following years. Liu spent four years trying to break into Hollywood, running up a credit card debt and working odd jobs. “Another three years were spent trying to break into Hollywood, sinking my precious life savings into something many would call a pipe dream,” he said. “It’s really only been these past three years that anything I’ve done has begun to bear any fruit.”

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The Shang-Chi star ended his note with a word of thanks for his former boss Paul Gibbon and the offices of Deloitte Toronto. Firing him, he said, destroyed a life he was building for someone else and allowed him to live for himself.

“To Paul Gibbon and the offices of Deloitte Toronto; sincerely, honestly, THANK YOU. You did for me what I never had the courage to do myself; you destroyed a life that I was building for someone else, so that I could finally begin to build a life for me,” he wrote.

Simu Liu has earlier spoken about what led him to pursue a career in finance and accounting, instead of acting. “Before I decided to act professionally, the biggest obstacle was realizing that I could give myself permission to want a different version of success. Growing up with my parents and my family, our idea of success was pretty rigid and fairly traditional, and that’s what led me to pursue a career initially in finance and accounting,” he said, according to Vanity Fair.