How is it possible that on the cusp of a fifth decade of an already fabulous career, Michelle Yeoh is more kick-ass than she’s ever been?
Yet here’s the evidence: In the past five years, the actress who got her start in Hong Kong martial arts films in the 1980s has made three movies that have surpassed the $100 million mark at the U.S. box office and became a “Star Trek” captain, and this year she’ll be one of the top stars in James Cameron’s “Avatar 2.”
But Yeoh feels the freewheeling, mind-bending action comedy “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” her first Hollywood film as the top-billed star that opens in theaters Friday, March 25, just might be her career-defining role.
“The first time I read the script, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I’ve been training for 37 years to get tothisrole,” Yeoh told The Chronicle during a visit to San Francisco on Sunday, March 20, for the California premiere of the film at the Castro Theatre. “Maybe I had to wait until this moment to be able to do it. … I felt I could go on this crazy-ass journey.”
Review: Michelle Yeoh beats Marvel in the multiverse game in ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’
And oh, what a journey.
This is a film that was built around Yeoh, which has never happened before for her in Hollywood. In it, she plays Evelyn Wang, a Chinese immigrant who runs a laundromat with her husband Waymond (onetime child starKe Huy Quan, best known for“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”and “The Goonies”), daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu,“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,”“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) and her 93-year-old father (acting legend James Hong, also the voice of Mr. Gao in Pixar’s“Turning Red”).
Evelyn is also fighting an IRS agent(杰米·李·柯蒂斯)who threatens to close down her business.
Evelyn feels life has passed her by — then she gets connected to her own multiverse. In these different universes, Evelyn is, among other personalities, an ancient warrior, a sushi chef, a lesbian with hot dogs for fingers (you read that right — this movie is bonkers), and, appropriately, a movie star. Evelyn, combining all of her talents, must do battle in all these multiverses to save her family.
有一个现象在YouTube上球迷拼接together films of their favorite stars, even combining different movies, to create the “ultimate” film of a particular actor. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” feels like a Michelle Yeohmovie fan edit,但与杨紫琼所愿参与者。
And, well, that’s kind of what happened, except those fans were the Daniels, directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. The creators of“Swiss Army Man”concocted a Michelle Yeoh multiverse. In fact, Evelyn’s character was named Michelle in the script they sent to Yeoh, who immediately unleashed a roundhouse kick on that idea.
“I said, ‘She cannot be called Michelle in this script!’ ” recalled Yeoh, who recently sat with Quan and Hsu during an interview with The Chronicle. “They said, ‘Well, itisyou,’ and I was like, ‘No, no, no, no, no, no. This immigrant woman isnotme. You cannot keep reminding the audience. The worst thing is to keep everyone distracted.’
“I said, ‘If you don’t change the name, I’m outta here.’ ”
So the Daniels changed the name.
“We’ve loved so many of her movies over the years,” Scheinert said in a separate interview. “We just felt like if she says yes, we’ll be so lucky!”
Yeoh, who was born in Malaysia, moved to the United Kingdom with her family at age 15 and studied ballet at the Royal Academy of Dance in London. But when an injury curtailed her dance career, she switched to modeling, winning beauty contests and acting in commercials. It was a commercial with action star Jackie Chan that caught the attention of D&B Films, who turned her dance moves into martial arts moves in a series of groundbreaking action movies beginning with the rollicking“Yes, Madam!” (1985), in which she was a Dirty Harry-like Hong Kong cop.
She retired from acting after marrying D&B founder Dickson Poon. But five years later, after their divorce, she returned to action as Chan’s co-star in “Supercop” (1992),in which she did all of her own stunts— including an incredible stunt in which shejumped a motorcycle onto a moving train.
After a string of successful action films, she seriously injured herself during the making of “The Stunt Woman” (1996). She was nearly paralyzed jumping off a bridge onto a moving truck and contemplated another retirement. But a strange thing happened. Hong Kong action films were catching on in America on home video. Hollywood was grooming Chan to be a star, and New Line Cinema released a dubbed version of “Rumble in the Bronx,” which became a hit in the U.S. Encouraged by the box office trend, another studio, Dimension, released an edited, dubbed version of “Supercop,” which did brisk business in the U.S. in the late summer of 1996.
Yeoh’s performance in that 4-year-old film caught the eye of James Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, and they cast her opposite Pierce Brosnan in“明日帝国”(1997). The Bond film grossed more than $330 million worldwide, and by the time Yeoh starred in the Oscar-nominated blockbuster Ang Lee martial arts drama “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000), she was a bona fide international star.
但是,尽管she constantly worked — in Hong Kong, China and Hollywood (2005’s “Memoirs of a Geisha,” 2007’s “Sunshine”) — she went through a dry spell. Box office hits were few and far between.
Then a decade later, much to her delight, a surge began. Yeoh made an appearance in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” (2017) and continued with a villainous turn in “Crazy Rich Asians” (2018), then played Captain/Emperor Philippa Georgiou in seasons one through three of “Star Trek: Discovery” and had a meaty martial arts supporting role in Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” last year. (Yeoh told The Chronicle that the long-rumored “Section 31,” a “Star Trek” spin-off centering on her character Georgiou, is scheduled to begin filming this year.)
By the time the Daniels came calling, she was ready.
“Even when I’m not filming, I train every day,” Yeoh said. “Once you know your ABCs — and our ABCs are like the front kick, side kick, back kick, roundhouse kick — and the punches are still the same … it’s just the choreography that’s different, and the people you’re dancing with are different.”
Kwan, sitting beside Scheinert, said that Yeoh was everything they thought she would be, and more. He said she took the whole cast and crew under her wing and helped forge an instant camaraderie.
“She’s very much driven by passion,” Kwan said. “She’s the type of woman who’s always building families around her. So every relationship is not just a working relationship, it’s her building her global family. Even now, she’ll text me and say, ‘Send me a picture of your son!’ ”
Quan, whose role as Evelyn’s husband is his first major role in two decades, said working with Yeoh was a privilege.
“What’s incredible is that I think all of us have come to expect Michelle Yeoh in a certain type of role: She f—ing kicks ass, she’s always the beautiful heroine,” Quan said. “To see her in this movie is such a huge departure from her previous work. To be on the set and witness this phenomenal performance was incredible. I am in awe of her talent.”
The last time Yeoh was in San Francisco, she said she had a blast as the grand marshal of the 2018 Chinese New Year’s parade in Chinatown. This time she was the center of attention at an enthusiastic reception before a packed house for the California premiere at the Castro Theatre, where her fans made themselves known. (Yeoh was set to appear at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday, March 23, but tested positive for COVID-19 — or, as she announced on herInstagram, “jumped into the Covid universe!” — and sat it out.)
It was only the second screening of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” after its world premiere at the South by Southwest festival in Austin on March 11. Naturally, Yeoh stayed after to sign autographs and take selfies with her Bay Area fans.
Approaching her 60th birthday this year, this is the best time of her life.
“I’m extremely proud of myself for letting loose — to be a real woman, a mother who holds the family together who sometimes is taken for granted and is invisible,” Yeoh told the Castro crowd of playing Evelyn. “Was it difficult? Hell yes! … But I think all of us feel like we’re everything everywhere all at once.”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once”(R)is in theaters Friday, March 25.
Chronicle Senior Arts and Entertainment Editor Mariecar Mendoza contributed to this story.