Elizabeth Sung

Elizabeth Sung was a Chinese-American actress and film director.

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Sung began her career as a dancer and moved to New York at age seventeen to attend The Juilliard School. Upon graduation, she was recruited by the Alvin Ailey Repertory Dance Company, where she performed in many of Ailey’s most iconic works.

She moved to Los Angeles in 1987 after being accepted into Sanford Meisner’s master class in acting, where she studied for three years. She also studied with director and acting teacher Milton Katselas while in Los Angeles.

Sung appeared in such television shows as Murder, She Wrote, Knots Landing, Picket Fences, Charmed, ER, Touched by an Angel, NYPD Blue, House, Desperate Housewives, The Sopranos, NCIS: Los Angeles, Bones, Hawaii Five-0, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mike and Molly, Shameless, and Disjointed.

From 1994 to 1996, Sung appeared on the American soap opera The Young and the Restless as restaurant owner Luan Volien.

Her film appearances include roles in The Joy Luck Club, Tango & Cash, Lethal Weapon 4, and Memoirs of a Geisha.

In the late 1990s, Sung entered the MFA program in directing at the American Film Institute. Her thesis film, The Water Ghost, aired on the Lifetime Channel as part of a series on emerging women in directing. In 2002, she was one of three women accepted into the ABC/DGA Television Directing Fellowship. She directed the short film Requiem, which was based on her childhood in Hong Kong and her journey to New York City as a ballet student. Requiem was awarded a CINE Golden Eagle and the Mayor’s Award for Excellence.

She was a longtime member of the Television Academy, and was inducted into The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2016 for her work as an actress.

Sung died May 22, 2018, in Los Angeles, California. She was 63.