Michelle Yeoh

Born as Yang Zi Chong in the mining town of Ipoh in West Malaysia in the lunar year of the Tiger, she spoke English and Malay before Chinese. A ballet dancer since age 4, she moved to London, England to study at the Royal Academy as a teenager.

After a brief dance career, she won the Miss Malaysia beauty pageant title in her native country and the Miss Moomba beauty pageant title in Melbourne, Australia in the early 1980s.

Her first on camera work was a 1984 commercial with martial arts star Jackie Chan. In 1985, she began making action movies with D&B Films of Hong Kong. She was first billed as Michelle Khan, then later, Michelle Yeoh. Never a trained martial artist, she relied on her dance discipline and her on-set trainers to prepare for her martial arts action scenes. She uses many dance moves in her films. She still does most of her own stunts and has been injured many times.

Ironically, she still cannot read Chinese and she has to have Chinese script read to her.

In 1988, she married wealthy D&B Films executive Dickson Poon and retired from acting. Even though they divorced in 1992, she is close to Poon's second wife and a godmother to Poon's daughter.

When she returned to acting, she became very popular to Chinese audiences. Among her films from this period were Heroic Trio and Police Story 3 with Jackie Chan.

She became known to Western audiences through her co-starring roles in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and in the phenomenally successful Wo hu cang long (2000) aka Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon directed by Ang Lee. She turned down a role in a sequel to The Matrix (1999).

She has her own production company, Mythical Films and has trained with the Shen Yang Acrobatic team for her role in The Touch (2002), an English-language film she starred in and produced. She also did a superhero turn, playing the lead in Silver Hawk. She filmed Fearless in 2006 with Jet Li, but her scenes were edited out.

Since starring in the movie adaptation of Memoirs of a Geisha in 2005, Michelle has had an increased presence in Hollywood films. She as part of the ensemble cast in Danny Boyle's science-fiction film Sunshine in 2007. In 2008, she stars in The Children of Huang Shi with Chow Yun-fat, Babylon A.D. opposite Vin Diesel, and in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.