Michelle Yeoh has received global critical acclaim for her performance in the award-winning absurdist comedy film ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once.‘ The role earned her a nomination for the Academy Award For Best Actress and bagged her a Golden Globe Award.
However, things have not been easy for the actress who has seen stereotypical portrayals of Asian people in Hollywood from close quarters. The actress revealed in an interview how she only got stereotypical movie offers after the 1997 James Bond film ‘Tomorrow Never Dies.’
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Michelle Yeoh Reveals Why She Took Two Year Break From Acting
Michelle Yeoh has been receiving a lot of awards and praise for her performance in last year’s absurdist dark comedy action flick ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once.’ However, things haven’t been easy for her.
In an interview with People magazine, the 60-year-old actress revealed how she had to take a break after doing the 1997 James Bond film ‘Tomorrow Never Dies,‘ which was her first Hollywood film. Before this, she was already an established name in Hong Kong cinema.
“James Bond at that point had only been known as macho, and the girls were just the ones with cutesy names,” she said. “At that point, people in the industry couldn’t really tell the difference between whether I was Chinese or Japanese or Korean or if I even spoke English”.
She said that people would “talk very loudly and very slow” to her. The actress did not work for two years because of stereotypical offers, until ‘Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’ was offered to her.
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Yeoh Has Won Numerous Awards For ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’
Yeoh has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once‘ as well as the Critics Choice Movie Awards.
The role which has earned her so much recognition was originally written for a man and was first offered to Jackie Chan. When the gender of the role was changed, she asked for a change.
“The only thing I said to them was, ‘The character cannot be called Michelle Wang,’” Yeoh said. “I’m not an Asian immigrant mother who’s running a laundromat. She needs her own voice.’ That was the only thing. I’m like, ‘If you don’t change the name, I’m not coming in.’” The makers finally listened to her and the character was renamed Evelyn Wang.
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