Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh attending a conference in Hollywood on Oct. 17, 2022.
Credit: © DFree/Shutterstock

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. All month long, Behind the Headlines will feature AAPI pioneers in a variety of areas.

She is everything and everywhere! The Everything Everywhere All at Once star Michelle Yeoh is having a year. Yeoh is a Malaysian actress. Yeoh, trained as a dancer, is known for doing her own stunts in action and martial arts movies. In 2023, Yeoh won the Academy Award for best actress for her role in the science fiction comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022).

Yeoh Choo Kheng was born in Ipoh, Malaysia, on Aug. 6, 1962. She began ballet training as a young child. When Yeoh was 15, she moved to Chester, England, to train at the Hammond School of performing arts. Yeoh later attended the Royal Academy of Dance in London. She primarily studied ballet. After an injury, she retired from dance and began participating in beauty pageants. In 1983, Yeoh won the Miss Malaysia pageant and represented the country at the Miss World pageant.

Yeoh began acting in the 1980′s. She starred in Hong Kong martial arts movies produced by D&B Films, performing her own stunts. Her name was listed as Michelle Khan in the credits to appeal to Western audiences. Yeoh married Dickson Poon, head of the D&B studio, in 1988 and retired from acting.

After Yeoh and Poon divorced in the early 1990’s, Yeoh starred in the action movies Police Story 3: Super Cop (1992), The Heroic Trio (1993), Tai Chi Master (1993), and Wing Chun (1994). While filming The Stuntwoman (1996), Yeoh injured her back during a stunt. However, she continued acting and performing serious stunts.

In the late 1990’s, Yeoh retired the pseudonym (false name) Khan, performing as Michelle Yeoh thereafter. In 1997, Yeoh played the spy Wai Lin in the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies. That same year, she starred in the historical drama The Soong Sisters. In 2000, Yeoh appeared in the martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Yeoh began making more English-language films, including Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Sunshine (2007), and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008). In 2011, Yeoh starred in The Lady, a biographical film about the Nobel prize-winning Burmese activist Aung San Suu Kyi. Yeoh was deported from Myanmar because of her role in the film.

Yeoh began working in television in 2015. Her first major role was in the series “Star Trek: Discovery,” playing Starfleet Captain Philippa Georgiou from 2017 to 2020. Yeoh’s later films include Crazy Rich Asians (2018), Last Christmas (2019), Marvel Studio’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021), and Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Shang-Chi (Simu Liu) in Marvel Studios’ Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Credit: © Walt Disney Studios

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. All month long, Behind the Headlines will feature AAPI pioneers in a variety of areas.

Marvel’s newest superhero and first-ever Asian lead has actually been around for a while. Shang-Chi is a comic-book superhero who is a Chinese master of martial arts. He was created for the American publisher Marvel Comics. Shang-Chi was featured in the motion picture Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings released in September 2021.

Shang-Chi was trained as a child to serve his father’s secret criminal organization. He developed superior skills in hand-to-hand combat and mastered various weapons. Shang-Chi also has advanced instincts and wisdom. In addition, Shang-Chi possesses 10 rings with supernatural powers. The rings are worn on the fingers in the comics, but they appear as iron bracelets in the film.

Shang-Chi was created by the American writer Steve Englehart and artist Jim Starlin. He first appeared in the 1973 comic Special Marvel Edition #15. From 1974 to 1983, he was the lead character of Marvel’s “Master of Kung Fu” series. Shang-Chi also appeared in such Marvel comic-book series as “Heroes for Hire,” “Agents of Atlas,” “Avengers,” and “X-Men.”

In the original comics, Shang-Chi is raised in an ancient fortress in China as part of a secret society. After being assigned to assassinate an enemy of his father, Shang-Chi meets a British secret agent named Smith. Smith reveals the criminal nature of the secret society. Shang-Chi’s father is Fu Manchu, a crime lord also known as the Master of Kung Fu. Shang-Chi agrees to work with Smith and British intelligence to stop his father’s criminal organization.

In Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, the character is played by the Chinese-born Canadian actor Simu Liu. The character’s origin story is largely rewritten, in part to correct harmful stereotypes present in the original comics. The creators and cast consisted largely of artists of Asian descent. The film was directed by the Japanese-American Destin Daniel Cretton from a screenplay by the Chinese-American writer Dave Callaham.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings follows Shang-Chi and his friend Katy in San Franciso, California. They are running from villains sent by his father, Xu Wenwu, who is armed with immortality granted by the fabled 10 rings. The characters travel to Macau, China, where Shang-Chi’s sister, Xialing, runs a successful underground fighting club. Xialing joins them to travel to the magical world of Ta Lo, the home of the sibling’s late mother and her warrior people. There, they confront otherworldly forces and Xu Wenwu’s secret society.