Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng (born 6 August 1962) is a Hong Kong actress and dancer, well known for performing her own stunts in the action films that brought her to fame in the early 1990s.
[>>]Source: WikipediaMichelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng (born 6 August 1962) is a Hong Kong actress and dancer, well known for performing her own stunts in the action films that brought her to fame in the early 1990s.
Born in Ipoh, Malaysia, she is based in Hong Kong and was chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World in 1997.
She is best known in the Western world for her roles in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, playing Wai Lin, and the multiple Academy Award-winning Chinese action film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, for which she was nominated the BAFTA for "Best Actress". In 2008, the film critic website Rotten Tomatoes ranked her the greatest action heroine of all time.
She is credited as Michelle Khan in some of her earlier films. This alias was chosen by the D&B studio who thought it might be more marketable to international and western audiences. Yeoh later preferred using her real name.
Early life and career
Michelle Yeoh Choo Kheng was born to a prominent ethnic Chinese family in Ipoh, Malaysia on 6 August 1962. Her parents are Janet Yeoh and Yeoh Kian Teik, a lawyer and MCA politician. She has had a passion for dance from that of an early age. She started to study ballet at the age of four years old. At 15 years old she moved with her parents to England, where she was enrolled in a boarding school. Yeoh later studied at the Royal Academy of Dance in London, majoring in Ballet. However, a spinal injury shattered her lifelong dream of being a prima ballerina, and she consequently had to switch her focus away from dance to choreography and other arts. She later received a B.A. degree in Creative Arts with a minor in Drama.
In 1983, at the age of 21, Yeoh won the Miss Malaysia beauty pageant. She was also Malaysia's representative at the 1983 Miss World pageant in London. From there, she appeared in a television commercial with Jackie Chan which caught the attention of a fledgling Hong Kong film production company, D&B Films.
Yeoh's career in Hong Kong started with a few commercials for Charles Jourdan, opposite action movie heroes Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-fat before being offered a film contract. The Charles Jourdan brand was handled by D&B Group in Hong Kong, run by Yeoh's future husband, Dickson Poon. In 1988, she retired from acting after marrying Poon. Three years later, the couple divorced and Yeoh returned to acting in 1992. Her first movie after the comeback was Police Story 3: Super Cop, which was partly shot in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
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