Nancy Yu

Nancy Yang Yu lives in Toronto, ON. A fiercely independent second-generation, Chinese-Canadian woman, Nancy started acting at the age of 25. Her parents grew up in Northern China with farming backgrounds during the Cultural Revolution and they came to Canada in search of freedom and the opportunity to have a better life. In Canada, her father became a molecular biologist, and her mother, an agricultural lab technician. Not only were they immigrants to a new country, but they also experienced a tremendous amount of shame from their peers and other family members for having their firstborn son be born with special needs, this especially being the case in Asian cultures. She knows one of her reasons for coming to this earth is to act as a pillar of unconditional love and strength for her family and to help heal generational wounds of pain that come with experiencing life with a family member who has special needs, and that especially is the case for her mother. From the beginning her parents wanted her to pursue a stable career, something that wouldn't bring the family any more negative attention. Compliant for most of her life, this was never in the blueprint of Nancy's true plan, for her deep-seated, and burning desire was to live in movies and act since she was a kid, but she never told anyone. She knew she had a unique and powerful story to tell and that it was gifted to her by God, that which she vehemently protected. Throughout her childhood, Nancy struggled with her body image, her Asian identity, and coming to terms with being bullied for her race by, women, men, and children, and then being shamed for her sexuality while she was going through puberty as a teenager. Nancy turned to film, art, music, and the study of religion in order to cope with her reality and she became heavily influenced by popular culture by her late teen years. Never fitting into the small town where she grew up, her search for acceptance and belonging truly began when she moved to Toronto in 2012 where she went to school at the University of Toronto. She dropped out after starting her fifth year in 2017 due to experiencing complications with her ability to keep up with other classmates. During this period her parents were suffering from marital issues and her oldest brother was also struggling with schizophrenia, she would periodically go home to visit them. Experiencing her own psychotic break while she was working in the corporate sector from 2018 to 2019, Nancy turned to Martial Arts, Buddhist spirituality as well as Hellenistic and Vedic astrology in order to help her navigate the turbulent energies in her life, which helped her realize she was awakening and going through her own dark night of the soul. In November 2019, she met Miracle Kerr, who became her agent. She returned to the University of Toronto in January 2020 and joined the union in October 2021. She graduated in 2022 with a Major in Sociology and a Double Minor in Asian Canadian Studies and Buddhist Psychology & Mental Health. She was awarded the Wanda O'Hagan Scholarship in Canadian Studies by recommendation of the Director of the Canadian Studies Program.