Hong Kong movie star Michelle Yeoh bags Golden Globe

Malaysian-born Hong Kong actress turned Hollywood star Michelle Yeoh stood her ground at the Golden Globe Awards on Tuesday night – where she won best actress for A24’s multiverse adventure Everything Everywhere All at Once – by telling the awards show’s producers to “shut up” as they tried to cut her speech short.  

“I can beat you up,” said Yeoh jokingly as the orchestra began to play halfway through her speech. “And that’s serious,” she added.  

Yeoh’s decades-long Hollywood career began in the mid-90s with the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies” before starring in Ang Lee’s 2000 Oscar-winning martial arts blockbuster Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The latter role earned her a BAFTA Best Actress nomination.  

“I’m just going to stand here and take this all in,” she said, holding her golden trophy. “Forty years… I’m not letting go of this.”  

She went on to say, “When I first came to Hollywood, it was a dream come true… until I got here. I came here and was told, ‘You’re a minority.’”  

After working with Hollywood masterminds such as Steven Spielberg, Lee, Rob Marshall, and James Cameron, the 60-year-old found that roles became scarce as she got older.  

“I thought, ‘Hey, come on, girl. You had a really, really good run,’” she commented.  

She called her chance to star in Everything Everywhere All at Once “a gift.”  

“Thank you, A24, for believing in these two goofy, insanely smart, wonderful geniuses, who had the courage to write about a very ordinary immigrant, aging woman, mother, daughter,” she added.  

She continued, “I was given this gift of playing this woman who resonated so deeply with me and with so many people because, at the end of the day, in whatever universe she was at, she was fighting for love, for her family.”  

Yeoh ended off by saying, “This is also for all the shoulders that I stand on, all who came before me, who look like me, and all who are going on this journey with me forward.”  

Credited as Michelle Khan in her early Hong Kong films, she rose to fame in the 1990s after starring in a series of Hong Kong action films where she performed her own stunts, such as Yes, Madam (1985), Police Story 3: Supercop (1992) and Holy Weapon (1993).  

(Callan Williamson)