International Actress & Former Bond Girl Michelle Yeoh On CNN’S TALK ASIA

Her name is Yeoh, Michelle Yeoh, a star who broke stereotypes for Asian actresses by landing the role of a smart and sexy butt-kicking Bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies. The Malaysia-born actress is well known for performing her own stunts in action films and is among the few Asian actresses to successfully break into Hollywood with credits including Ang Lee’s ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’, the Spielberg-produced ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’, and the upcoming ‘The Mummy 3’.

On last weekend’s TALK ASIA, Yeoh rides with CNN’s Anjali Rao on the 120 year-old historic Peak tram to take in a spectacular panoramic view of Hong Kong. The Peak is one of Yeoh’s favourite spots in Hong Kong and also her former home. After visiting her wax double at Madame Tussauds, she shares with Rao her path to stardom from child ballet dancer to Miss Malaysia and eventually Hollywood actress. Yeoh gives her take on the negative press for her role portraying Mameha, a Japanese Geisha, and whether she even wanted the break into Hollywood.

Yeoh believes her Bond character represented a new generation of women: “If you look at this new generation, or the last two decades of the Bond girls, they’ve been tougher, they’ve been more sassy, without just being this sexual innuendo. Without just being the girls in the bikinis.” Her portrayal as Wai Lin, the first Asian bond girl also broke down the stereotypical image of “the Ming vases, just fragile and in the background, be seen and not heard. Or the femme fatal, prostitutes from Chinatown…those images were updated.”

Yeoh recalls her insistence on doing all her own stunts for Tomorrow Never Dies but the high insurance in the U.S could not afford that high risk. Known for her marital arts skills she remarks: “It’s only in the film set that you get to do all these crazy stunts or you know, some movements, you would only dream about. And you would never do it at home.”

For Yeoh, the box office success of the multiple Academy Award-winning film ‘Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’ came as a surprise. Her first film after the Bond movie, she became involved through her ‘love’ for director Ang Lee’s work and “to work with someone who has the vision, who has a passion, who has something to tell…” that got her involved. The film propelled her to even greater international stardom. She recalls her excitement at the prestigious Cannes film festival: “Because you know, when you do commercial movies, actions movies, they don’t go down that red carpet.”

Her next big international hit had her portray the graceful Mameha in Memoirs of a Geisha, also starring fellow Chinese actresses Gong Li and Ziyi Zhang. The film was however criticized for casting Chinese actresses as the lead to play Japanese characters. Yeoh comments lightly on the controversy: “The right face, the right demeanor and the right chemistry. As a director, as a producer, that is what you look for. It’s not what’s on your passport.”