Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win an Oscar for Best Actress.
Actor Michelle Yeoh made history on the night between Sunday and Monday when she became the first Asian woman to win a leading Oscar. Malaysian-Chinese Yeoh, 60, won the award for her role as Evelyn Quan Wang in the action fantasy film Everything Everywhere All at Once.
The Oscar win crowned Yeoh’s long career as an actor, which has lasted almost 40 years.
From dancer to miss
Yeoh was born in 1962 in the city of Ipoh to a wealthy Malaysian family, which gave him good opportunities to realize his dreams in life. The daughter of a lawyer father and a housewife was already very athletic at a young age, but young Michelle was especially interested in ballet, which she started practicing at the age of four.
Michelle Yeoh posed with her Oscar stick. CAROLINE BREHMAN
At the age of 15, the family moved to Great Britain, where she eventually studied ballet at the Royal Academy of Dance. However, her career as a dancer was interrupted already at the threshold of adulthood due to a back injury. After that, Yeoh dreamed of starting her own ballet school, but in 1983 her mother made a decision that ultimately changed Yeoh’s life.
Janet Yeoh entered her daughter in the Miss Malaysia contest, which Michelle won and got to represent her home country in the Miss World contest. Missimenetys spawned a role in a TV commercial as an action star Jackie Chan’s side by side, which aroused the interest of filmmakers. Already in 1984, Yeoh played a small role in a Hong Kong action drama and soon became a regular face in Hong Kong action films. Yeoh soon became famous for exceptionally doing his own stunts in action films.
A successful return
In the late 1980s, Yeoh took a five-year hiatus from acting when she married a businessman By Dickson Poon with, but when the couple broke up, Yeoh returned to the silver screen in 1992 and never looked back.
Michelle Yeoh starred in the Bond movie alongside Pierce Brosnan. Shutterstock
Yeoh gained a lot of fame in Asia and in 1997 it was time for an international breakthrough when he got a big role in the Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies. Another breakthrough role came three years later Ang Lee directing, becoming super popular Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in the movie (2000). She received a Bafta nomination for best actress for her role.
Since his international breakthrough, Yeoh has appeared in several blockbusters such as Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Crazy Rich Asians (2018) as well as The Lady (2011), in which he portrayed a Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
The movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won Yeoh awards. Sony Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection/All Over Press
Last year’s Everything Everywhere All at Once shows what has made Yeoh an exceptional actor over the years. There are plenty of fight scenes in the film, which the athletically gifted Yeoh performs wonderfully, even though he had the help of stunt actors.
This is what Yeoh looks like in Everything Everywhere All at Once, which won seven Oscars. Courtesy Everett Collection/All Over Press
A famous spouse
Yeoh currently lives in Geneva, Switzerland. His common-law partner is also world-famous, as Yeoh has long considered the former president of the International Automobile Federation FIA and Ferrari’s former F1 team principal as one By Jean Todt, 77, with. The couple started dating in 2004 and got engaged in 2008.
Yeoh has been a familiar sight in F1 races around the world for a long time. The couple has no children together.
Jean Todt and Michelle Yeoh are a familiar sight in the F1 pit. JM HAEDRICH/SIPA/Shutterstock