With her role in “Everything Everything All At Once” is Michelle Joehoe achieved a gigantic triumph last year. The multiverse comedy from the Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) became a global phenomenon and Yeoh (like her co-star Ke Huy Quan) won both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. The science fiction film has won a total of seven Oscars, including Best Picture.
But the 60-year-old was already a huge star in the 80s and 90s. She was one of the few women in action cinema in Hong Kong to achieve major success in films such as “Tokyo Powerman” and “Police Story 3”, before making the leap to Hollywood with the James Bond film “Tomorrow Never Dies” ( 1997). passed. But in the beginning it was anything but easy for her, like Yeoh 2021in an interview with the Guardian cheated.
“When I started in Hong Kong, there was no help from CGI,” Yeoh recalls. “You just did what they wanted.” That included jumping a motorcycle onto a moving train for “Police Story 3” (1992), a stunt Yeoh performed herself after her stuntman realized he had broken a leg during rehearsals. “I felt invincible,” Yeoh said.
Her spectacular performance drew a lot of attention – which apparently scratched the ego of the actual protagonist. Jackie Chan then wanted Yeoh to stop performing stunts. When she confronted him about it, Chan reportedly replied, “If you do one thing, I must do the other better” – and it’s entirely possible that all this would have bothered him much less had it not been for a woman who does it steals the show from him.
‘He thought women belonged in the kitchen, not in action movies’Yeoh describes the sexist prejudices she faced at the beginning of her career. “Until I kicked him in the ass!”
Jackie Chan in Everything Everywhere All At Once?!
The kick seems to have had an effect: Over the years, Chan and Yeoh have been involved in other projects together, suggesting that the “Rush Hour” star has at least partially reconsidered his views on women in action cinema. A year after “Police Story 3”, Jackie Chan cameoed in the Yeoh movie “Mega Cop”, later the two had central speaking roles in “Kung Fu Panda”.
By the way: Jackie Chan was originally slated for Yeoh’s Oscar-winning role in “Everything Everywhere All At Once”! The 69-year-old would play the lead role – and Yeoh would only play his wife (the role of the man Ke Huy Quan ended up playing). As planning progressed, the Daniels finally decided to switch roles – and Chan left the project entirely.
However, Yeoh confirmed on The Graham Norton Show that even after the film’s roaring success, it didn’t cause any bad blood. “Jackie and I are very good friends,” Yeoh said, “and he’s not mad about it.”