Lucy Liu has opened up about her unexpected health journey, where she was wrongly diagnosed with cancer and underwent unnecessary surgery. The 57-year-old Hollywood star shot to fame on the hit FOX series Ally McBeal alongside Calista Flockhart in 1997. It didn't take long before she transitioned from the small screen to big blockbuster movies, with the award-winning actress landing the role of Alex Munday in the 2000 action movie Charlie's Angels. But it's fair to say things weren't as easy as they seemed behind the scenes.

In the 1990s, Liu received the terrifying news that she had cancer after she discovered a lump in her breast. In a new interview with People magazine, she admitted: "I didn't really think too much about it, but it was scary, because at that time, there was less information that was available because we didn't have the internet."

The mum-of-one's doctor said at the time that they "sort of felt the lump and said it was cancer" without "getting screened" or conducting follow-up tests. Instead, she was "immediately scheduled" for surgery to remove the 'cancerous tissue'.

Liu admitted to the outlet that she never questioned the doctor, assuming the medic knew what he was doing. However, it was later determined that she didn't, in fact, have the deadly disease.

The film star is now partners with Pfizer for the company's Every Breakthrough Matters campaign, which encourages cancer screening to promote early detection. Speaking about the campaign, she said: "It's not about the fixing, it's about really understanding what screening is, and about information and advocacy. That's a really important thing.

"And even though there is so much available to us technologically, a lot of people don't do it because they don't want to know if something's wrong or they're too busy... [But] as busy as you are, it's a lifesaving thing because, oftentimes, it's caught too late, and at that point, you're basically scrambling to figure out what your resources are."

It comes after the actress opened up about becoming a first-time mother in 2015,confessing that she "didn't have a plan" for motherhood. At the time, she shared the exciting news on Instagram alongside a heartwarming snap of her carrying her newborn.

She captioned the post: "Introducing the new little man in my life, my son Rockwell Lloyd Liu. In [red heart emoji]." When she welcomed her son, the actress said she wanted "to change the conversation a little bit" as she discussed her upcoming projects.

Lucy told The Cut: "I didn't want to talk about the next project. I felt like I was reading the same script. I got tired of it. I didn't want the same dialogue. I'd heard myself say the same things many, many times and just thought, 'Well, this can't be what's next'. It wasn't enough."

When it came to having a child, Lucy told the outlet she "didn't mull over it too much", adding: "I didn't do a lot of research, I just pulled the trigger. I can think myself out of something so easily, but if I think too much, I won't do it. It's better for me to feel something and just go for it.

"A lot of people read books about parenting. I didn't do any of that. I was like, 'When the child is here, I'm just going to figure it out'."