Michelle Yeoh’s best movie roles before ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

CNN
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Over a career spanning four decades, Michelle Yeoh has been disarming audiences with her physical prowess as a martial artist and her emotive talent as an actor.

While she became an international icon 23 years ago, thanks to Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” it wasn’t until last year’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once” that she gained recognition from the Academy with her first Oscar nomination.

Here is a look back at some of Yeoh’s career highlights.

A formidable entry in Yeoh’s early years of making movies in Hong Kong, this rock-‘em-sock-‘em action film is notable for its prominent placement of female actors rising up against the baddies, clearly paving the way for later opuses like Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” saga. “Yes, Madam!” is also a fun time capsule, maintaining a slightly goofy tone while featuring Yeoh in a pixie cut and giant ’80s shoulderpads.

Yeoh shows off her martial-arts skills in this Hong Kong action-comedy opposite Jackie Chan, which received a dubbed release in the US. She played an Interpol inspector, and her role included truly harrowing stunt work – such as landing a motorcycle on a moving train, and in a few takes, dangerously skidding off of it – that was shown during the closing credits.

A somewhat more stoic but still kinetic action-packed martial arts movie, it’s plain to see how “Wing Chun” allowed Yeoh to soar in the later classic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” It also marks one of Yeoh’s superior collaborations with legendary director and stuntman Woo-Ping Yuen, with whom she later worked on “Dragon” and other titles.

Yeoh played one of the most powerful Bond women, an equal to 007 in terms of smarts and strength. Much was made at the time of Yeoh – a former beauty queen-turned-actress – doing her own stunts in the Pierce Brosnan-starring film, as she kicked butt and won acclaim.

A dazzling international hit, memorable to many for its graceful wire-work action sequences, from director…