Biography

Michelle Yeoh

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Overview

Born
August 6, 1962 · Ipoh, Malaysia
Birth name
Michelle Choo-Kheng Yeoh
Height
5′ 4″ (1.63 m)

Mini bio

Michelle Yeoh was born in Ipoh, Malaysia. She's the daughter of Janet Yeoh & Kian Teik Yeoh. She's of Hokkien descent, speaking English and Malay before Chinese. A ballet dancer since 4, she moved to London to study at the Royal Academy as a teen. After a brief dance career, she won the Miss Malaysia beauty pageant title in and the Miss Moomba beauty pageant title in Melbourne, Australia in the early 1980s. Her first on camera work was a 1984 commercial with martial arts star Jackie Chan. In 1985, she began making action movies with D&B Films of Hong Kong. She was first billed as Michelle Khan, then Michelle Yeoh. Never a trained martial artist, she relied on her dance discipline and on-set trainers to prepare for martial arts action scenes.

She uses many dance moves in her films and does most of her own stunts. In 1988, she married wealthy D&B Films executive Dickson Poon & retired from acting. Even though they divorced in 1992, she's close to Poon's second wife and a godmother to his daughter. When she returned to acting, she became very popular w/ Chinese audiences. She later became known to Western audiences through role in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and in the phenomenally successful Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). She turned down a role in a sequel to The Matrix (1999).

She has her own production company, Mythical Films. She trained with the Shen Yang Acrobatic team for her role in The Touch (2002), an English-language film she both starred in and produced. She hopes to use her company to discover and nurture new film-making talent. She also aspires to act in roles that combine both action and deeper spiritual themes.
- IMDb mini biography by: Unknown author

Family

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Trivia

Malaysian actress. Miss Malaysia 1983. Miss Moomba 1984.
Member of the jury of the 1999 Berlin International Film Festival.
Member of the jury of the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.
Member of the International Olympic Committee since October 2023.
One of the highest paid Chinese-language actresses in the world.

Quotes

The reason why I decided to wait two years after the Bond movie, and to work with Ang Lee in a martial arts movie, is because I really believe that this genre deserves more respect and dignity than it's ever been given. Before, people saw it as a fairy tale; they felt they could take it easy. But it shouldn't be about that. It's so steeped in our culture, it should have more depth to it. It's never easy to find that balance, when it's such a magical type of film, to make you accept our soaring to the skies . . . it was a risk, but when we did this movie, it was for a Western audience.
Learning how to walk in a kimono was an art form in itself - if you didn't learn to do it properly it was like dragging a dead cat across the floor! We had to walk with a piece of paper between your knees and a tea tray balanced on your head.
In Asia, we constantly play Koreans, Malay, Chinese. We do not question that, as you do not question an Englishman playing an American or a German.
I prefer to be kicked four or five times well, you know, hard, than twenty or twenty five times not so good...
[on playing Aung San Suu Kyi in The Lady (2011)] If there is one thing I learned from this experience it's you need to believe in people, and their ability to grow and to change. You can never give up hope.