The Year of Yeoh: Michelle Yeoh caps awards season with Oscar nod

LOS ANGELES -- “Everything Everywhere All at Once” could best summarize Michelle Yeoh these days.

Casting her in a different light (as a laundromat owner with a tax audit looming), the comedy enabled the veteran actress to show multiple skills and jump to the top of the year’s best lists. Tuesday, she got her first Best Actress Oscar nod and a path to greater success.

The Year of Yeoh? Oh, yeah.

“When I received the script of ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once,’ it was overwhelming,” Yeoh says one week before the Oscar nominations. “It was like these two goofballs who are insanely talented had the courage to shine the light on a very ordinary woman, aging, who was trying to keep the family together – all of the things we find so relatable.”

The goofballs – directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert -- gave Yeoh the kind of break that could extend her already long tenure in Hollywood. More important, it could help broaden her choices.

“I started my career in Hong Kong,” the 60-year-old says. “But everybody came to Hollywood because that’s the ultimate dream – to be in a Hollywood movie. Then, you come here and it’s like, ‘OK, I don’t see any more faces that look like me.’ There were not many roles that represented who we really were.”

Yeoh got work, but it didn’t necessarily mirror her life. "People didn’t really know Japan, Korea, China and they always acted so surprised. They would say, ‘You speak English?’ And you go, ‘Uh, yes.’ I tell this horrible joke: ‘The flight coming here was like 13 hours. So I learned on the way.’”

Yeoh edged near Oscar’s glory with “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (which was nominated for 10 Oscars and won Best Foreign Language Film), but didn’t enjoy residual benefits.

In 1993, “Joy Luck Club” was supposed to crack the glass ceiling, but didn’t. Then, in 2018, “Crazy Rich Asians” turned up and it, too, was a make-or-break situation. Once again, Yeoh was the star.

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“God forbid, what if ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ wasn’t as successful as it was?” she asks. The doors could have closed again. Director John Chu’s storytelling was essential. “That’s what we need – storytellers like that because they understand what the stories are that need to be told. Otherwise, we would not be sitting here. There would be no roles out there.”

Throughout her 30-plus-year career, the Malaysian actress has had strong supporters – including “Crouching Tiger’s” Ang Lee, “Tomorrow Never Dies’” Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, Rob Marshall, Danny Boyle and, most recently, Destin Daniel Cretton, who cast her in “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.”

“Now, we have our own Chinese superhero, so that was another huge step forward,” Yeoh says with a smile.

A big splash with “Everything Everywhere” (which was nominated for 11 Oscars) could be the change she has sought. “I think we have broken that glass ceiling,” Yeoh says. “I hope Ninja kicked it to hell and it will never come back like Humpty Dumpty together again.

“The only way we can keep this going is by getting the right storytellers, having the studio executives understand and keep putting it forward, which will create more jobs, which will create more opportunities. I think that’s what we are asking for. Give us equal opportunities to prove that we are capable of doing all of these things.”

To amplify that pivot, Yeoh stars in a new television series, “American Born Chinese,” as an unassuming aunt who has a secret identity as the Goddess of Compassion. Produced and directed by Cretton, it offers one more chance to expand the universe.

“Five years ago, nobody would believe I could do comedy,” Yeoh says. “That I could do drama. That I could bring my martial arts into (the story).”

And yet, “Everything Everywhere” afforded her that. “It was all of the things that an actor could hope for,” she says.

And now? Oscar glory looms.