Michelle Yeoh at 59: stunt scenes without stunt doubles and the success of a wild adventure in the Multiverse

Michelle Yeoh is a mega star in Asia. The best pay. She is famous for her martial arts movies, much like Jackie Chan, and like Tom Cruise, a contemporary of the action movie world, she doesn’t use stuntmen. You can shake hands right now and realize that 60s can act like they’re 30 and still be a total box office hit. With Everything everywhere at the same time (Everything Everywere all at once) the Malaysian actress stands out.

This fast-paced, absurd comedy created by The Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) gave Yeoh the opportunity to do scenes that are truly insane. At first, it turns out to be a movie that falls within normal parameters. Yeoh in character Evelyn runs a gray laundry room with her naive and weak husband Raymond (Ke Huy Quan), her father Gong Gong (James Hong) and her daughter (Stephanie Hsu) who introduces her to his girlfriend. to account to some offices for a tax debt. The state employee who attends them eating cookies is none other than the talented Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween, 1978) who in this film asked that her character could free her bellythe real one, which overflows over his pants, “after having hidden it for a lifetime,” according to his Instagram account.

At that moment when Evelyn hears the claims, she begins to take her first jumps through another reality, the first one she visits in her frantic journey through the Multiverse, similar to that of Marvel (other alternative realities). Suddenly, the employee becomes a deranged criminal and her husband a seasoned fighter who defends her. The powers are obtained from his self from other realities, and are activated by doing strange things, such as inhaling a fly with his nose, among other crazy things. Evelyn also learns that she is the worst version of all of them and that is why she must save the world.

Yeoh’s adventure through the Multiverse is wild. In an interview with The Guardian he said that in one scene she had a fit of laughter when she saw herself fighting two half-naked men with huge dildos in their hands. “OMG! Would you have ever thought that one day you would be doing this kind of martial arts?” he said to himself.

He also did scenes in another reality where human beings had sausage-shaped fingers and did everything with their feet. In that life she had a love affair with the tax agent. All really crazy, surreal and cool at the same time. Yeoh definitely got the role of a lifetime from him, in a story that suited him wonders, almost turning 60. The movie became an instant cult following. At the end of the function, the Argentine public, quite young, does not stop applauding.

From ballerina to action movie queen

Michelle was born on August 6, 1962 in Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia. Her birth name is Yeoh Chu-Kheng. Her first training was as a dancer. She was enrolled in ballet classes at age four. In 1980 he had joined the Royal Academy of Dance in London, where he got his degree. Her dream was to be a prima ballerina. She dabbled in jazz too, Inspired by the movie Fame. However, her dream was cut short by a spinal injury that took her away from the stage to specialize as a choreographer. and by medical recommendation, definitely dance at a professional level.

Her beauty and ballet-shaped body earned her the title of Miss Malaysia when she returned to her country in 1983. In those times, exposure is when meet Jackie Chan, the martial art movie star, where they share an advertisement. This is how Yeoh caught the attention of the producers and the doors to a successful film career were opened for him, where he participates in several martial arts and action movies with Chan and Chow Yun-Fat. film yes madam (1985) and Magnificent Warriors (1987). In one of those productions, she meets the film executive Dickson Poon, whom she marries in 1988 and decides to dedicate herself to a family life, abandoning acting. The marriage lasted four years.

Her divorce, in 1992, fortunately brought her back to the big screen. Although she is a dancer by training, and having received no formal training in martial arts, the actress is one of the few women to perform stunts without stunt performers.. She was ready to become a Hong Kong mega star, with leading roles and resounding box office success. Made The Heroic Trio (1993), Tai Chi Master (1993) and Wing Chun (1993).

International fame was not long in coming for such a talent and beauty willing to give it all. We are talking about someone dared to accelerate, without a stuntman and without digital effects with a motorcycle on a moving train, jumping between wagons, in the movie Police Story 3: Supercop. The actress says that Jackie Chan, with whom she made that film, was opposed to women doing action scenes of that caliber, except Michelle, who was like any other boy. “He knows I’m tough,” she assured. She also wondered what she was thinking in that same movie hanging from the trunk of a pickup truck, in motion, of course. “I was doing the craziest stunts.”, he said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in a review of his stunts. The most dangerous thing he did was roll off the roof of a truck and land on the hood of a convertible that Jackie Chan was riding on. The scene does not go as planned, because when it hits the hood it slips, Jackie tries to hold it, in a panic and it slips from her hands onto the asphalt.

In 1997 she became a Bond girl. She landed the role of Wai Lin, in 007: Tomorrow Never Dies. Along with Pierce Brosnan, in his second appearance as the secret agent. Michelle personifies a Chinese spy, where she displays her martial arts and her seduction. In one scene, she fights for a few seconds with Bond to command a motorcycle, where they are chased through the streets of Bangkok.

Wai Lin had the power not to give in to Bond’s seduction strategies. The actress recalled in the same Entertainment Weekly interview a very funny situation when she arrived in London, passing through Immigration, where a tense climate usually reigns. She asked him what she was going for. She explained that it was a movie and they wanted to know which one she was. “I told her that she was coming to do a Bond movie. You should see how her face transformed. Are you going to be a Bond girl?” she recounts, as she mimics the agent’s grin from ear to ear as he welcomes her to London and stamps the document at top speed.

That same year she was chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world. Other international successes followed, such as the film The Tiger and the Dragon (2000). She who is fluent in English, this time had to learn to speak Mandarin Chinese. She plays an expert in martial arts, in a love story frustrated by loyalty to someone already dead. The film received ten Oscar nominations, of which it won four.

The former Bond girl fell in love again. Since the mid-2000s, she has been in a relationship with someone who did not hinder her career. This is Jean Todt, who in the times that began to be seen was director of the Ferrari team. “We have discussed it. I was already married and we will be together as long as we are happy. It is not necessary that we are married, because marriage is something additional. Being together is enough and I also want to be independent,” Yeoh said in an interview with Apple Daily. And she added that in terms of children “I can’t even take care of myself. Having children is a long-term commitment and I don’t think this world is so wonderful that I have multiple children.”

In 2005 he was part of Memories of a Geisha, without having Japanese ancestry, film produced by Steven Spielberg. In 2011 she was the protagonist of another great film, directed by Luc Besson, TheLady. He put the body and soul to the Burmese Aung San Suu Kyi, an activist and politician who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 who was imprisoned for 15 years, under house arrest, by a military government. Besson, who had cried reading the script, did not want another director to make the film “and ruin the project.” Without giving it much thought, he decided to film it, giving the leading role and responsibility to the Malaysian actress. The preparation of the actress was based on archive videos. She was never able to talk to the politician so she was released in 2010. She had to learn to speak Burmese and lose five kilos.

Michelle Yeoh felt that this movie fully impacted her life. And that after this role she is a “better person” and that this story, in which peaceful struggle prevails, can help the new generations reflect. She is an altruistic person. Today she is serving as an ambassador for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). In a press conference at the New York headquarters, he assured that his goal is to help people left behind in the world, whether because they were born poor, women or in an area affected by devastation.

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