She's Hollywood's favorite universe-hopping superhero and is making history for Asian women in Hollywood … But Michelle Yeoh has actually been a superstar of Hong Kong cinema for decades. This is her story.
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00:00You say Michelle, I say yo!
00:02Michelle!
00:03Yo!
00:04Michelle!
00:05Yo!
00:06I was born Yeo Chu King, and like a lot of us, I adopted an English name to make it easier
00:34for others to remember. But still, they mispronounced my last name. Yeo, Yao, Yo. It's simply Yo.
01:04Because I'm a dancer, I have rhythm. And when it comes to martial arts, the rhythm
01:30is very important. At the end of the day, it's like two people dancing.
02:00Bon has to be a man of the 90s, and we're going to the next millennium. He has to work
02:29with women who are capable of doing the things that he does. I don't speak Mandarin, it's not
02:44my mother tongue, so I had to learn it phonetically. Fortunately, I've done action movies before, so the
02:50physical side of it wasn't so difficult, until I tore the ligament in my knee. I need a knee surgery.
03:20We knew it was special, because we knew it wasn't often that we had an all-Asian cast
03:47in a studio film. But it was a lot of pressure, because what if it didn't work?
04:11I'm here because we need your help.
04:13I'm very busy today. I don't have time to help you.
04:16I just wanted to make movies that mattered. And then I received the script, everything,
04:23everywhere, all at once. I knew immediately the gift I'd been given to play Evelyn Wong,
04:32who turned out to be the most challenging, humane, unique, tender, sweet, sour,
04:41tough, and resilient character.
05:04I had to wait 40 years, but it's okay, because there are different
05:08journeys, there are different battles, there are different times, and I'm lucky that I'm still
05:14able to be here, right? Even if it's at such a good old age.
05:19I know that every card that has ever been stacked against me in this industry has been stacked
05:25against Michelle tenfold. And I imagine it is only because of her love and deep dedication
05:33that someone as talented and internationally revered as the Michelle Yeoh could have waited
05:40almost 40 years to finally have her chance at being number one on the call sheet.
05:54I'm just so happy that I'm still here when the change has happened. You know,
05:59that I'm not in my rocking chair and go like, why didn't I get that chance? And for all that
06:05looks like us, we are going to move forward and find bigger and better opportunities.