To delight to her millions of fans around the globe, Michelle Yeoh is now an Oscar winner. The legendary star of Hong Kong action films was honored with the Best Actress Academy Award for her role in The Daniels’ “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” Yeoh also made history as the first Southeast Asian woman to win the Best Actress Oscar. A moment that, frankly, should not have taken 95 years to occur.
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The 60-year-old actress campaigned for the indie hit for over a year following its opening at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. Yeoh took the Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance in February. She also won the National Board of Review award for Best Actress and the Independent Spirit Award for Lead Performance in a gender-neutral category.
Yeoh was snubbed for an Oscar nomination in 2001 when “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” landed 10 Oscar nominations including Best Picture. Her other Hollywood credits include “Tomorrow Never Dies,” “Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Sunshine,””Crazy Rich Asians” and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” She first made a name for herself starring in Hong Kong Action films such as “Yes, Madam,” “Police Story 3: Super Cop” and “Supercop 2.”
This year’s Best Actress race was full of controversy after Andrea Riseborough’s surprise Oscar nomination for her performance in “To Leslie.” However, it was always going to come down to Yeoh and Cate Blanchett. The star of “TAR” won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, the Best Actress honor from the New York Film Critics Circle and Best Lead Performance from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
Always busy, Yeoh will be seen next in the Disney+ limited series “American Born Chinese,” the Netflix limited series “The Brothers Sun,” Kenneth Branagh’s “A Haunting in Venice,” James Cameron’s “Avatar 3” and “Avatar 4,” and Jon M. Chu’s “Wicked: Part One“ and “Wicked: Part Two.”