Michelle Yeoh has been nominated for her first Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Evelyn Quan in the smash hit Everything Everywhere All at Once. Yeoh is the first Malaysian woman ever to be nominated for an Oscar.
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Who is Michelle Yeoh?
Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng PSM, born Yeoh Choo Kheng on August 6, 1962, is a Malaysian-born actress. She first began working in Hong Kong and then moved to the United States.
Yeoh was born in Ipoh, Perak, to a Hokkien and Cantonese-speaking ethnic Malaysian Chinese family. Janet Yeoh and Yeoh Kian-teik, a lawyer and politician with the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), are her parents. She was raised in an English-speaking family. Yeoh is a Buddhist.
Yeoh had a passion for dance from a young age and started learning ballet at the age of four. As a primary student, she attended the all-girls secondary school Main Convent Ipoh.
She relocated to the UK with her parents when she was 15 years old to attend an all-girls boarding school. Yeoh later majored in ballet while attending the Royal Academy of Dance in London, United Kingdom. She turned to choreography and other forms of art instead of becoming a professional ballet dancer because of a spinal injury. In 1982, she earned a BA in creative arts with a theatre minor.
At the age of 20, Yeoh won the Miss Malaysia World pageant in 1983. She represented Malaysia at the Miss World pageant in London in 1983. Later that year won the Miss International Tourism Quest pageant.
She rose to fame in the 1990s after starring in a series of Hong Kong action films in which she performed her own stunts, including Yes, Madam (1985), Police Story 3: Supercop (1992), and Holy Weapon (1993). She rose to prominence after appearing in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and Ang Lee’s martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). Hidden Dragon earned her a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress.
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Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Reign of Assassins (2010), Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016), and The Lady (2011), in which she played Aung San Suu Kyi, are among Yeoh’s other films.
From 1988 to 1992, Yeoh was married to Hong Kong entrepreneur Dickson Poon, who owned businesses such as Harvey Nichols and Charles Jourdan. Yeoh married American cardiologist Alan Heldman in 1998. She began dating Jean Todt in 2004, when he was the General Manager and CEO of Scuderia Ferrari and later the President of the FIA. Yeoh lives with Todt in Geneva, Switzerland and is engaged to him.
