Michelle Yeoh Could Win Her First Oscar, but She’s Been Kicking Ass for Decades

Despite lacking formal martial arts training, Yeoh studied ballet at London’s Royal Academy of Dance and realized her training and flexibility would allow her to play martial arts roles. She started her career in Hong Kong action films, with her first starring role as a tough, Dirty Harry–like cop in Yes Madam (1983).

She worked out eight hours a day at a gym to prepare for the part, and although initially regarded as “just” a dancer, she learned martial arts moves on the set from instructors and choreographers and did as many of her own stunts as possible, according to Rikke Schubart’s book Super B–s and Action Babes.

She continued performing dangerous stunts in her subsequent films, dislocating her shoulder during the filming of Royal Warriors (1986) when she was kicked by a colleague, Schubart wrote. One of her early standout roles was in Magnificent Warriors (1987), in which she displays complex martial arts moves, wields a whip, and fires a mounted machine gun.

Although Yeoh had plenty of experience performing her own stunts throughout the 1980s, nothing in her career proved as dangerous as her performance in Police Story 3: Supercop (1992), in which she portrayed an Interpol agent who teams up with Jackie Chan’s police officer protagonist.

Quentin Tarantino famously claimed Supercop boasted “the greatest stunts ever filmed in any movie ever,” and one of the best was when Yeoh actually jumped a motorcycle onto the top of a moving train. “What was I thinking?” Yeoh said to Entertainment Weekly. “I was swinging at the side of trucks. I was riding a motorcycle onto a moving train. I was doing the most insane stunts.”

Yeoh was nearly killed during one stunt, which is shown as an outtake during the movie’s end credits. Yeoh accidentally slipped during a scene in which she is thrown onto the hood of a moving convertible. A panicked Chan tried to hold onto her from the driver’s seat, but she fell off the car. Yeoh not only escaped a serious injury, she got up and performed the stunt again.

Yeoh continued handling many of her own stunts throughout her 1990s movies, including Johnnie To’s action classic The Heroic Trio (1993) and The Stunt Woman (1996). While filming the latter, Yeoh suffered a serious injury after landing on her head during an 18-foot jump from a bridge onto a truck, according to Schubart, putting her in traction for a month.

Yeoh received her international breakthrough when she was cast in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), alongside 007 actor Pierce Brosnan. Defying the stereotypes of most “Bond girls,” Yeoh plays an agent of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, who assists Bond and more than matches his skills in a fight.

Among the most memorable action sequences are a scene in which Brosnan and Yeoh leap off a skyscraper, and another in which they fight off a helicopter while riding a motorcycle. Yeoh once again performed many of her own stunts, impressing the American film crew, Schubart said.

One of Yeoh’s most famous roles came in the international hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning drama based on the traditional “wuxia” genre of martial arts films. Set in the 19th century Qing dynasty, Yeoh portrayed a female warrior and romantic interest to Chow Yun-Fat’s protagonist.

Yeoh had many memorable scenes in Crouching Tiger, including a sword fight with co-star Zhang Ziyi. The film uses a style called “wire fu,” in which the characters make gravity-defying leaps with the help of wire and pulleys. Lee said Yeoh and the other actors did most of their own stunts, with computers used only to render the wires invisible.

The stunts weren’t easy, and at one point Yeoh suffered a knee injury that required complicated surgery and took her away from the set for three months, nearly forcing Lee to replace her with another actor, according to Schubart.

At age 60, Yeoh is enjoying the greatest success of her career for her role in Everything Everywhere All At Once, in which she plays a Chinese immigrant named Evelyn who discovers an ability to connect with versions of herself in parallel universes.

Her age didn’t stop her from performing many of her own stunts. “Physical fighting is relatively easy because I’ve been doing it for so many years,” Yeoh told Variety, noting that she still exercises regularly through shadowboxing and kicks.

Yeoh has several major fight scenes in the film, including a memorable fight with Jaime Lee Curtis in a narrow stairway. “When we were doing that fight sequence, it was like a dance,” Yeoh said. “It’s about timing.”