Michelle Yeoh Riding High

James Bond's new counterpart is no shrinking violet. Meet Michelle Yeoh, the former beauty queen who rides flying motorcycles onto moving trains.

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Her birthday falls under the sign of the Lion in the western zodiac; the Asian zodiac marks her as a Tiger. The comparison shouldn't be taken lightly. The lion is known among fortune tellers as a bold, fearsome creature with regal bearing, while the Asian tiger is renowned to be fearless, ferocious and daring, sharing the top of the astrological food chain with the Dragon. "I needed all that, to be where I am right now," says Michelle Yeoh. "I've always been very lucky in that I've always been given opportunities – but when I do get those breaks, I am very, very ambitious. I will go and do my very best, because I don't settle for anything less."

But despite the "alpha-female"-type characteristics, she is surprisingly warm and friendly in person. Talking about her success, her life, and her latest projects, she uses the word "lucky" and "fortunate" ten times as much as she uses any other adjectives. Indeed, one would think she had to be blessed, to have withstood the calamities she has and still come out on top. This woman has survived, among other things, a shattered career dream, a failed marriage, and an 18-foot fall where she landed on her head and nearly snapped her spine. "I've been very lucky, knock on wood," she says, instinctively rapping on the nearest surface, which is a venetian blind made of fake wood. She reconsiders and taps her knuckles against her own head.

Michelle Yeoh's real voice has rarely been heard on film in this country, since most of her movies are Hong Kong action fare, a common victim to voice dubbing. It's a surprise to hear her voice. Her accent and speech patterns mark her as a Briton, yet she uses enough American euphemisms and pronounces Cantonese names with such fluency that I would be hard-pressed to decide where she was from.

In fact, she was born in Ipoh, Malaysia, where she was taught both Malay and English in school, and picked up Malaysian-inflected Cantonese from her parents, who are ethnic Chinese. Add to that the newscasts coming out of the TV in Mandarin, and you have a woman who at one point in her life might have been able to have a conversation in one language and run subconscious subtitles in another three. "But it's language usage that sets fluency," says Michelle. "I haven't used Malay for so long, and if you have not used it, you forget."

"Which language do you dream in?" I ask.

"I'd say English, because my brother has told me that when I speak in my sleep, it's in English!"

To the misfortune of potential ballet audiences, but to the great fortune of moviegoing audiences worldwide, Michelle's dance career did not go as planned. She sustained a spinal injury before graduating college, a rotated disc that would forever bar her from engaging in the grueling training schedules required for ballet. "It was just like seeing your dream go . . . krrrkkkkk!" She gestures in the air, using her hands to pantomime the collapse of a building facade.

Michelle finished college in England, eventually getting a degree in choreography and drama and returning to Malaysia. Unbeknownst to Michelle, her mother had entered her in the national beauty pageant. Michelle, following through on a lark, won first place and was crowned Miss Malaysia.

Her success in the pageant led to a commercial shoot in Hong Kong, where she was cast opposite Jackie Chan. I'm sure the danger-loving Chan never imagined that this beauty pageant winner, who was helping him hawk a watch on television, would one day be matching him stunt-for-stunt in a blockbuster movie less than a decade later.

While her initial films met with some success, Michelle retired after only a few years to marry Dickson Poon, a Hong Kong business magnate and multimillionaire. Most people, after marrying into such a situation, might just kick back and spend the rest of their lives getting manicures, eating well, buying small islands. But after three years of married life, Michelle divorced Poon, who had encouraged her to retire from movies, and returned to films in 1992. Her first return feature was the insurance-company-rankling Supercop. As Jackie Chan's co-star, Michelle performed a series of incredible stunts herself – at one point Michelle, entirely unfamiliar with motorcycles, jumped one onto a moving train. The script also called for other outrageous stunts, including one where the hero leaps through space from a building rooftop, averting death only by snatching at a rope ladder dangling from a helicopter. "Yeah yeah yeah – I'll do that!" said Michelle, when told of the helicopter stunt. "No no, I don't think so," replied director Stanley Tong. "If you do that, what's Jackie going to do?" Michelle apparently sated herself by clinging to the side of a speeding van. She avoided oncoming-traffic-induced Sudden Declaration Trauma by executing maneuvers reminiscent of a gymnast on the parallel bars.

A few years after its initial Hong Kong release, the rights for Supercop – which was previously available in the States only in a handful of Chinatown video stores – were purchased by Miramax, which launched a worldwide re-release. Suddenly, Michelle Yeoh was in the global spotlight, working publicity for the movie on three continents. The attention was well-deserved and led her directly to her next project – the 007 franchise, Tomorrow Never Dies.

"About 2 years ago, when I was taking meetings here, I met Jeff Kleeman, a producer from United Artists," she explains. "He said, ‘You know, you would be perfect in a Bond movie.' And I thought, yeah, you're right! But then I sat back and thought, ‘Bond girl. It's not really . . . I can't see myself' You know, Bond girls have that image of being sexy, gorgeous, a little helpless, and needing to be rescued by Bond in all the situations."

"And then he said, ‘Oh, no no no, it would be different.' And he was right. Basically, the director and the producers were looking for a woman of the 90s, a woman who was on a par with James Bond. It was time to take the Bond series into the 21st century, and the roles for women now are a lot stronger; not necessarily more butch, but able to maintain that balance of being feminine and being able to take care of themselves at the same time."

In assuming the role, Michelle's success has been similar to Ming-Na Wen's in that her talent supersedes the importance of her ethnicity. Like Wen on television's ER or The Single Guy, Michelle won a role that was not scripted specifically for an Asian, something uncommon in Hollywood for a lead character. "There was no definition of where [Bond's co-star] came from. She could have been Russian, she could have been Chinese, she could have been anyone," Michelle points out, drawing attention to the fact that "they were not looking specifically for an Asian; that's a good indication that times are changing and stereotyping isn't so fixed now. [Cross-cultural casting] is acceptable, and people are more and more aware of that." But, she concedes, "changes like this always take time."

As for her next project, manager Terence Chang has been screening scripts for her. Until the release of Tomorrow Never Dies on December 19th, she's keeping up with a frantic publicity schedule. After the buzz quiets down she will have time to pick her next project, which, she says, might even include a dramatic role. Whatever project she picks, it's bound to be a good one – 1998 is the Year of the Tiger.

Source: A. Magazine: Inside Asian America, April/May 1997. Copyright © 1997 Metro East Publications, Inc. By Rain Noe

Copyright 1997 ASTYLE (TM) LLC. All rights reserved.