The Oscars are finally upon us, and in a development that few would have anticipated, former quirky underdog Everything Everywhere All at Once has become the unassailable best picture frontrunner. Can the chaotic metaverse action comedy sweep leading lady Michelle Yeoh with it? The veteran Malaysian-born star is in a neck-and-neck race for best actress with Cate Blanchett, gathering momentum on a tide of industry affection and decades-long notability. Yeoh would be the first Asian (and only the second woman of colour) ever to win in the category.
A win for her would be notable in other ways too: careers like Yeoh’s don’t tend to culminate in Oscars. A former Miss World contestant, she became famous as an icon of action cinema, a genre the Academy rarely favours even when it comes from Hollywood, let alone from Hong Kong. Catching up with her early work is a hard task, with many films only available via obscure DVDs.
Yeoh’s breakthrough role, in the mid-80s Hong Kong martial arts cop movie Yes, Madam, can be found on Amazon Prime Video under the alternative title of In the Line of Duty II: The Super Cops, with Yeoh credited by her earlier moniker Michelle Khan. It’s scrappy, but galvanised by her striking presence and dauntless physicality. A few years later, she more than held her own opposite Jackie Chan in the similarly fast, furious Police Story 3: Supercop (Prime), a hit that triggered a run of nine Yeoh roles in two years, all absent from the legal streaming realm.
The Stunt Woman (1996; Apple TV) is the most interesting and instructive of her early vehicles, however. Given a humane feminist perspective by director Ann Hui, its story of a kung fu expert who abandons a successful stunt directing career for a stifling marriage showcased Yeoh’s dramatic chops alongside her dazzling action-woman proficiency.
Her first Hollywood role offered fewer dramatic challenges: a Bond girl, albeit an unusually arse-kicking one, in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). But American action cinema wasn’t yet ready for an Asian leading lady, and her subsequent Hollywood roles either entailed playing second, third or fourth banana to action men such as Vin Diesel (Babylon AD) and Brendan Fraser (The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor) or exoticised “dragon ladies” in orientalist kitsch such as 2005’s Memoirs of a Geisha (Sky Store), in which she was nonetheless better than the material demanded or deserved.
When she finally had a global crossover hit, it came from Asia: Ang Lee’s glorious wuxia (martial hero) epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) took Yeoh’s fighting moves to balletic heights while giving her big, soulful romantic notes to play. Sixteen years later, minus her co-stars, she reprised her role in the hokey Netflix sequel Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny. Lightning didn’t strike twice.
British film-makers Danny Boyle and Asif Kapadia took advantage of Hollywood’s resistance, casting Yeoh to vivid effect in, respectively, the sleek, cerebral sci-fi Sunshine (2007) and the little-seen but eerily atmospheric Arctic love triangle Far North (2008). Luc Besson improbably gave her a shot at prestige glory with the Aung San Suu Kyi biopic The Lady (2011), but despite Yeoh’s earnest efforts, the film was a dreary – and now woefully outdated – misfire. You wonder why the director and actor never collaborated in their mutual action comfort zone.
The wuxia genre continued to serve Yeoh most generously – never better than in 2010’s terrific Reign of Assassins (currently free on ITVX), an absolutely relentless, Ming dynasty-set, woman-against-the-world romp co-directed by John Woo. True Legend (Apple TV) and Master Z: Ip Man Legacy are more boilerplate martial arts efforts, in which she slots gamely into an ensemble.
But a few years ago, Yeoh entered a new Hollywood phase. She’s hardly tested in the brashly enjoyable Jason Statham vehicle Mechanic: Resurrection (2016), nor as a haughty shopkeeper in the misguided festive romcom Last Christmas. But the whopping success of Crazy Rich Asians (2018), and her regal, amusingly deadpan presence in it, seemed to remind casting agents of Yeoh’s power – alongside, perhaps, an imperious recurring role in TV’s Star Trek: Discovery, which endeared her to a whole new fanbase of geeks.
The actor has also earned her Marvel Cinematic Universe stripes in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings – though it took a project as odd and unexpected as Everything Everywhere to capitalise on her fighting skills and her acting smarts. Whether or not Yeoh wins on Sunday, here’s hoping plenty more award-worthy roles are forthcoming.
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