Olivia Munn thanks Sandra Oh and Lucy Liu for representing Asian women in movies

Olivia Munn has praised Sandra Oh and Lucy Liu for making her realise it was possible for Asian women to land good film roles.

The 39-year-old actress, who has Vietnamese and Chinese heritage, shared that was inspired to push for leading roles after seeing the likes of Lucy in Charlie's Angels and Sandra in Sideways.

"You don’t know if things are possible until you see other people doing it," she told Variety. "I grew up, and I watched Lucy Liu. And Sandra Oh, when she was doing Sideways, it meant so much to me to be able to see that.

"The more people we get into positions of power who recognise themselves and other people who don’t look like the norm – i.e., minorities and women – then that’s how it will shift.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Olivia revealed her excitement about her new drama Violet, which follows the story of a female film executive who stops listening the ‘The Voice' inside her head and vows to make decisions that make her happy, and gushed about its director Justine Bateman.

“Justine is one of my favourite, if not my favourite, directors that I’ve worked with so far,” she praised. “She’s definitely somebody who’s a cinephile, who really loves so much about film and is pulling from different places. I’m like, ‘I see what you’re doing and I see how f**king cool it is, and I’ll follow you.’”

Violet, which also stars Justin Theroux and Luke Bracey, was due to have its world premiere at the South by Southwest festival in March, but the event was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.