Michelle Yeoh made history Sunday by winning the Academy Award for best actress.
Yeoh took home the Oscar for her starring role in the psychedelic comedy drama “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” The accolade makes Yeoh the first Asian actress ever to win in the category.
“For all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight, this is a beacon of hope and possibilities,” Yeoh said in her acceptance speech. “This is proof that dreams dream big, and dreams do come true.”
Yeoh beat out Cate Blanchett for “Tár,” Ana De Armas for “Blonde,” Andrea Riseborough for “To Leslie,” and Michelle Williams for “The Fabelmans.”
Yeoh’s Oscar is particularly significant given the history of Asian actors and the Academy Awards. Yeoh, who was born in Malaysia, is only the second Asian actress to be nominated in her category; however, she is considered the first “openly” Asian actress with the distinction. Merle Oberon, who received a nod for the 1935 film “The Dark Angel,” had concealed her South Asian identity throughout her screen career. And Luise Ranier, a white actress, previously won the category for portraying a Chinese slave in 1937 drama “The Good Earth.”
The accolade closes a successful awards season for Yeoh, who earned critical acclaim for her performance as frazzled matriarch Evelyn Wang, an immigrant mother and laundromat owner who’s unexpectedly tasked with saving the multiverse from destruction. Earlier this month, Yeoh took home best lead performance at the Independent Spirit Awards, the first year the ceremony combined their acting categories to be gender-neutral. Among several other awards, she received the Golden Globe for best actress in a motion picture comedy or musical in January.
While Yeoh has been celebrated as a breakout star in Hollywood for “Everything Everywhere,” the actress is an industry veteran, with a career that spans decades, countries and languages. She first made a name for herself in Hong Kong cinema, becoming a prolific and respected martial arts action icon in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. As an actress who managed to buck the typical “damsel in distress” stereotypes in action movies, and instead often portrayed crime-fighting heroes, Yeoh became known as a feminist trailblazer in entertainment.
“I work very hard. I do make very clear choices that drive me into movies that are very supportive or about strong women, and I normally gravitate away from those that do not show women in the way that I believe that they are,” Yeoh previously told NBC News of her career.
Yeoh broke into the Hollywood scene in 1997 with the James Bond film “Tomorrow Never Dies” and since has been featured in several successful blockbusters including “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” in 2000 and “Crazy Rich Asians” in 2018. But “Everything Everywhere” was the first movie in which Yeoh portrayed the lead role.
Yeoh credited the decades of fervent activism within the Asian community with making it possible for Asian actors, who were once relegated to sidekick or background roles, to be so prominently featured in a movie.
“So many of us have been working on pushing the envelope and trying to make it happen, because it’s very simple,” Yeoh said. “We believe in us. We believe in our Asian talent. We believe all of us have stories that need to be told and need to be embraced.”
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
