While Prime Video’s Spider-Noir is packed to the gills with stars ranging from Nicolas Cage as The Spider/Ben Reilly, to Brendan Gleeson as villain Silvermane, the season’s breakout is actress Li Jun Li as femme fatale Cat Hardy. Wondering what you need to know about Li Jun Li, and where you might know her from before? Read on.
In the series — and spoilers past this point — while Cat Hardy doesn’t dress in a revealing cat suit or have bad luck powers a la Felicia Hardy, aka the Black Cat from the comics, she does channel some of that character. Specifically, her on again, off again romance with this universe’s Spider-Man, private investigator Ben Reilly. Working as a lounge singer and kept woman for Silvermane, Cat desperately wants to escape with her true love, Flint Marko (Jack Huston). Only problem is, he’s slowly turning into sand, and Silvermane outplays her at every move (up until the end of the season, of course).
Spider-Noir doesn’t even need to work overtime to explain why both Ben and Flint fall in love with Cat (we’re told that Silvermane’s interest isn’t sexual or romantic, it’s merely possessive)… Li Jun Li is filmed luminously in both black and white and color. And she also gets multiple musical numbers at Silvermane’s club that show off her prodigious singing talent (and yes, that really is Li Jun Li singing).
But despite being in the business since at least 2008, Li might be a bit of an unknown quantity for superhero fans in particular, so let’s break down what you need to know about Spider-Noir‘s breakout star.
Meet Li Jun Li: Where You Know The Actress From, Age, And More
Born November 6, 1983 in Shanghai, the now 42-year-old actress moved first to Bogotá when she was six-years-old, then to New York City when she was nine. From there, she attended LaGuardia High School in Manhattan — the most prestigious arts high school in the city — to study dance, and continued in college at SUNY Purchase in the Acting Conservatory.
From there, she made her way to Broadway with a breakout role in Lincoln Center’s 2008 production of South Pacific, which she spun into a TV career. While she racked up one-and-done roles on Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Blue Bloods, in 2011 she nabbed a recurring role as Maggie Huang on Damages, followed in 2015 with a main role on the short lived TV adaptation of Minority Report.
She joined the Chicago universe with Chicago P.D. and Chicago Fire, then snagged recurring roles on Quantico and Blindspot, before joining another short-lived movie to TV adaptation, The Exorcist for Season 2.
More recently, she played Francesca, a woman having a steamy affair and elevator sex with her co-worker on Netflix’s erotic drama Sex/Life. But probably her most high profile role to date was playing Chinese shopkeeper Grace Chow in Sinners, aka — spoilers for Sinners — the one who controversially lets the vampires in towards the final act of the movie. Coming up, she’ll have a guest starring role as Miriam on HBO’s The Last of Us Season 3, as well as appearing on Netflix’s The Night Agent Season 4. So look for more Li Jun Li in your near future.
You can follow Li Jun Li on Instagram, where she currently has 103k followers and seems elated to be on Spider-Noir.
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