Michelle Yeoh is a Chinese-Malaysian actress best known for her role in the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies and the Academy Award-winning movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
Belonging from at ethnic Chinese family based in Ipoh, Malaysia, Michelle Yeoh was born on August 6, 1962. As a young girl, Michelle Yeoh was greatly interested in various sports and had a passion for dancing. She started taking ballet lessons at the age of four. By the time she was 15, her parents enrolled her in a boarding school in England. She later entered the Royal Academy of Dance, in which she majored in ballet. But a spinal injury ended her dreams of becoming a prima ballerina and forced her to focus her attention in other forms of performing. She graduated in the Royal Academy with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Arts minor in Drama.
Yeoh first started as a commercial model in Hong Kong, appearing in television with stars like Chow Yun-Fat and Jackie Chan which eventually caught the attention of film producers. She then had her big screen debut in the martial arts films The Heroic Trio and Tai Chi Master. Her performance in the films earned her the reputation of being Hong Kong’s newest female martial arts actress.
Like the other Hong Kong superstars, Yeoh also tried a career in Hollywood. In 1997, she was cast in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, alongside Pierce Brosnan, as the Chinese spy Colonel Wai Lin.
In 2000, Yeoh further made fame for herself when she co-starred with Chow Yun-Fat and Zhang Zi Yi in the Chinese-language martial arts film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. The film was an international success, grossing $128 million in the United States alone. It also won four Academy awards including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It also bagged three BAFTA awards and two Golden Globes.