Michelle Yeoh says Crazy Rich Asians 'really changed things' for Asian actors
Michelle Yeoh believes 2018 comedy Crazy Rich Asians "really changed things" for Asian actors and filmmakers.
Michelle Yeoh believes Crazy Rich Asians "really changed things" for Asian actors and filmmakers.
The 64-year-old actress reflected on the way racial stereotyping has fluctuated over the years, particularly since the release of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - in which she played master warrior Yu Shu Lien - in 2000, and thinks it took the release of Jon M. Chu's 2018 comedy for Asian stars to be accepted into the mainstream.
She told The Guardian newspaper: "[For a while] looking east was fun. It was exciting.
"And we had Quentin Tarantino, who liked the movies that came out of Asia, which made a big difference.
"Then Jackie Chan came, Jet Li, Chow Yun-fat, and the directors - John Woo, Tsui Hark, Johnny Chu. They pushed open the doors. But still they were regarded as ‘Chinese’ directors. Not quite there, yet. And it’s taken a long time.”
Of Crazy Rich Asians' success, she added: "[That] really changed things."
Michelle won an Oscar for her role as matriarch Evelyn Wang in 2022's Everything Everywhere All at Once, and she appreciated the "confirmation" of her work.
She said: "Life is like a heartbeat; it’s up and down, up and down. So you reassure yourself it’s OK, you did your best, but there’s never any guarantee. Any award, especially the Oscar, is a confirmation from your peers. When we started out with Everything Everywhere, we just wanted to tell a story people could understand, in the language of the younger generation, and that’s why it was so fearless. Because an older person would look at it and say, what is that? What are you smoking? Or whatever.”
On seeing the script for the first time, she recalled thinking: “It’s so relatable, because it’s about a family in America dealing with things we all understand so well. Tax. The generation gap. Miscommunication. Love and family.”
In 1997, Michelle was cast as Wai Lin in Tomorrow Never Dies opposite Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, and she recalled being horrified to discover she wouldn't be allowed to do her own stunts, despite her reputation as an action star in Hong Kong.
She said: “I was an established action hero, and the first thing the director said was, you are not here because you know how to do action. You are here because you are an actress. We don’t want you to get hurt.”
On her first day of filming, she wasn't even allowed to make a jump of less than a foot down a step.
She recalled: “I’d say, are you guys pulling my leg?”
