Michelle Yeoh started acting in 1984 and after some stellar first steps in Hong Kong cinema, she finally made the leap to Hollywood as a Bond Girl in ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ and in the wonderful ‘Tiger and Dragon’. Both were a blessing and a curse: on the one hand, it became a regular high school of American action movies. For another, her roles were all that of “an Asian woman”. But since the Oscar for ‘Everything at once everywhere’ something has changed.
All the papers everywhere
Awards season was a real bath for Michelle Yeoh that culminated in the Oscar, a milestone that marked a before and after for the actress (or so we all intuited). Now, according to what he says in Variety, the papers that come to him have absolute independence of their race or the place where they were born. They’re just… well, papers.
The best thing that’s ever happened to me is getting scripts that don’t describe the character as a Chinese or Asian person. We are actors. We are supposed to act. We are supposed to do the papers we are given and our work to the best of our ability. That, to me, is the biggest step forward.
The Oscar, according to her, served to make the Asian community feel validated: “The most important thing he has done is create pride in our people. The day I won, I heard the roar of joy that came from that corner of the world.” In other words: this is no longer a thing that if one gets a job, another will not get it, but rather that “If I succeed, you can succeed.”
Oh yes, you may be wondering about the sequel to ‘Everything at once everywhere’. Because it has to come after the hit, right? Well Yeoh has made it clear that he doesn’t because he would basically be doing the same thing.
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