Michelle Yeoh

Yeoh Choo Kheng PSM (Chinese: 杨紫琼; born 6 August 1962), better known by the stage name Michelle Yeoh, is a Malaysian actress. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award as well as two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Credited as Michelle Khan in her early films in Hong Kong, she rose to fame in the 1980s and 1990s after starring in Hong Kong action and martial arts films where she performed her own stunts. These roles included Yes, Madam (1985), Magnificent Warriors (1987), Police Story 3: Super Cop (1992), The Heroic Trio, Tai Chi Master (both 1993), and Wing Chun (1994).

After moving to the United States, Yeoh gained international recognition for starring in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and in Ang Lee's martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), the latter for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Her Hollywood career progressed with roles in Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Sunshine (2007), and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008). She continued to appear in Hong Kong and Chinese cinema, starring in True Legend, Reign of Assassins (both 2010), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016), and Master Z: Ip Man Legacy (2018). In 2011, she portrayed Aung San Suu Kyi in the British biographical film The Lady.

Yeoh played supporting roles in the romantic comedies Crazy Rich Asians (2018) and Last Christmas (2019), as well as in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) and the television series Star Trek: Discovery (2017–2020). For her starring role as Evelyn Quan Wang, an overwhelmed matriarch navigating the multiverse in Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, becoming the first Asian[a] to win the category, and the first Malaysian to win an Academy Award. Her voice acting work has included Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022), and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023). She will next be seen as Madame Morrible, in the film adaptation of the musical Wicked, with Part One set for release in November 2024.

The film review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes ranked her the greatest action heroine of all time in 2008. In 1997, she was chosen by People as one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World", and in 2009 the same magazine listed her as one of the "35 All-Time Screen Beauties". In 2022, Time named her one of the world's 100 most influential people on its annual listicle and its Icon of the Year. In 2024, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.