Michelle Yeoh, the Malaysian and Hollywood Celebrity actress, Born as Yang Zi Chong in the mining town of Ipoh in West Malaysia in the lunar year of the Tiger, she spoke English and Malay before Chinese. A ballet dancer since age 4, she moved to London, England to study at the Royal Academy as a teenager.
After a brief dance career, she won the Miss Malaysia beauty pageant title in her native country and the Miss Moomba beauty pageant title in Melbourne, Australia in the early 1980s.
Yeoh started her film career acting in action and martial arts films such as The Heroic Trio in 1993, and the Yuen Woo-ping films Tai Chi Master and Wing Chun in 1994. Yeoh has had no formal martial arts training and she relies on her dance training and instructors, and does many of her own stunts.
Yeoh learned English and Malay before Cantonese, and cannot read Chinese characters. As she does not speak Mandarin, she learned the lines for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon phonetically.
Like many other Hong Kong stars, Yeoh has attempted to break into Hollywood. She starred in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies as Wai Lin (1997). Natasha Henstridge was rumoured as cast in the lead Bond Girl role but eventually Yeoh was confirmed. Brosnan was impressed, describing her as a "wonderful actress" who was "serious and committed about her work".He referred to her as a "female James Bond" in reference to her combat abilities. She wanted to perform her own stunts but was prevented because director Roger Spottiswoode ruled it too dangerous and uninsured. Thereafter, she was offered the role of Seraph in the two sequels to The Matrix, and she could not accept due to a scheduling conflict (the Matrix writers then changed Seraph into a male character and cast Collin Chou in the role).[citation needed] In 2002, she produced her first English film, The Touch through her own production company, Mythical Films.
In 2005, Yeoh starred as the graceful Mameha in the film adaptation of Memoirs of a Geisha, and she continued her English-language work in 2007 with Sunshine. In 2008, Michelle Yeoh also starred in the fantasy action film The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor with actors Brendan Fraser and Jet Li.
Her Measuremets are 34-26-36.
