Michelle Yeoh was born in Ipoh, Malaysia, to Janet Yeoh and Kian Teik Yeoh, and hails from a Hokkien descent, speaking English, Malay, and Chinese. From a young age, she was a ballet dancer, and at 4, she began her dance training. As a teenager, she moved to London to study at the prestigious Royal Academy, and after a brief dance career, she won the Miss Malaysia beauty pageant title in and the Miss Moomba beauty pageant title in Melbourne, Australia in the early 1980s.
Her first on-camera work was a 1984 commercial with martial arts star Jackie Chan, and in 1985, she began making action movies with D&B Films of Hong Kong, initially billed as Michelle Khan, later as Michelle Yeoh. Despite being an untrained martial artist, she relied on her dance discipline and on-set trainers to prepare for martial arts action scenes. She often incorporates dance moves into her films and performs most of her own stunts.
In 1988, she married wealthy D&B Films executive Dickson Poon and retired from acting, although they divorced in 1992, and she remains close to Poon's second wife and is a godmother to his daughter. After her return to acting, she gained immense popularity with Chinese audiences and later became well-known to Western audiences through her roles in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and the highly successful Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). She declined a role in the sequel to The Matrix (1999).
Michelle Yeoh has her own production company, Mythical Films, and trained with the Shen Yang Acrobatic team for her role in The Touch (2002),an English-language film she both starred in and produced. Her company aims to discover and nurture new filmmaking talent, and she aspires to act in roles that combine both action and deeper spiritual themes.
