Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng was born Yeoh Choo Kheng on 6 August 1962. Michelle Yeoh is a Malaysian actress who was credited as Michelle Khan in her early films.
Michelle Yeoh rose to fame in the 1990s after starring in a series of Hong Kong action films where she performed her own stunts, such as Yes, Madam (1985), Police Story 3: Supercop (1992), and Holy Weapon (1993).
She gained international recognition for her roles in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and in Ang Lee’s martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000).
The latter role earned her a BAFTA Best Actress nomination. After a career resurgence with a multi-year recurring role on Star Trek: Discovery (2017–2020).
Michelle Yeoh received widespread praise for her performance as Evelyn Wang in the 2022 film Everything Everywhere All at Once, winning the Golden Globe Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, and becoming the first Malaysian to receive an Academy Award nomination in any category with her nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
In 2022, Time named her one of the world’s 100 most influential people on its annual listicle and its Icon of the Year.
Yeoh was born on 6 August 1962 in Ipoh, Perak, to a Malaysian Chinese family of Hokkien and Cantonese ancestry. Her parents are Janet Yeoh and Yeoh Kian-teik (who died on 5 November 2014), a lawyer and Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) politician.
Does Michelle Yeoh speak Mandarin?
Michelle Yeoh grew up speaking Malay and English, and could not read or write Chinese. She expressed the latter as her “greatest regret” in 2022. Despite that, she learned to speak Cantonese fluently in the 1980s and some Mandarin in the 2000s. Yeoh was keen on dance from an early age, beginning ballet at the age of four.