Michelle Yeoh, Malaysian-Hong Kong actress and producer
Michelle Yeoh, PSM ( YOH; born 6 August 1962) is a Malaysian actress who rose to fame in 1990s Hong Kong action films and is best known internationally for her roles in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), the Academy Award-winning martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Shang-Chi and the Legend of The Ten Rings (2021). Yeoh is credited as Michelle Khan in her early Hong Kong films.
Born in Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia, she won the Miss Malaysia pageant of 1983 at the age of 20. She later achieved fame in the early 1990s after starring in a series of Hong Kong action films in which she performed her own stunts, such as Yes, Madam (1985), Police Story 3: Supercop (1992) and Holy Weapon (1993). She was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress for her work in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
She has appeared in many English, Mandarin and Cantonese language films. Her other works include Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Kung Fu Panda 2 (2009), Reign of Assassins (2010), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016) and The Lady (2011), in which she portrayed Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2018, she starred in the American romantic comedy-drama film, Crazy Rich Asians. She has also co-starred in the 2018 film Master Z: The Ip Man Legacy and the 2019 film Last Christmas. Yeoh was cast as original character Ying Nan in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021). She received top billing on the 2022 science fiction film Everything Everywhere All at Once.On television, Yeoh is known for her role in the Star Trek franchise as Philippa Georgiou in the Paramount+ series Star Trek: Discovery from 2017 to 2020, and its untitled spin-off series, announced in 2019.
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".