In a scene midway through “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Michelle Yeoh frantically runs away from a woman who is swinging her leashed lap dog in the air like a bola. She grabs a two-liter bottle of orange soda, chugs it in one go, and taps an earpiece to gain the powers of an alternate version of her character…one endowed with the powers of a teppanyaki chef.
Amazingly, that isn’t even in the top 10 weirdest things that happen in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the frantic, bizarre, and deeply heartfelt sci-fi film directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert that became the first art-house hit of the post-pandemic era — and proved that at 60, Michelle Yeoh is still one of the world’s most formidable performers.
As beleaguered laundromat owner Evelyn Wang, Yeoh is the center of a cosmic tale that rails against existential doom, declaring that in the infinity of the multiverse, what truly matters are the relationships that seem so small in comparison but provide stability amidst the chaos. The film is showcase for Yeoh’s unparalleled talents: She goes from a run-down everywoman trying to keep the peace with her daughter (Stephanie Hsu), save her marriage (Ke Huy Quan plays her husband) and salvage her business to a universe-hopping superhero in sensible sneakers who quite literally saves the world.
“She’s the woman that you pass by when you go to Chinatown or in the supermarket. It could be any immigrant woman,” Yeoh said in an interview with NPR last spring. “I felt that it was so important for someone like that to be given a voice and then to be shown that she is actually a super heroine.
“When [people] think ‘superhero,’” she added, “it’s always the guy [who’s] first in line for it. So that’s why when I received the script, it was such an overwhelming sense of relief. It was like, yes, finally.”
The performance has earned Yeoh some of the best reviews of her 40-year career and has landed her in the Oscar race for Best Actress. If she does score her first ever Academy Award nomination, it will come 26 years after she first broke into Hollywood as a Chinese spy with lethal martial arts skills in “Tomorrow Never Dies.”
Since then, the Malaysian-born actress — who came up alongside Jackie Chan in Hong Kong action films in the ’80s — has forged a filmography unlike no one else, jumping back and forth not only between Asian and U.S. productions, but also among big-screen blockbusters, television series and indie films. A small sampling of her most well-known projects: “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Star Trek: Discovery,” “The Lady,” “Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Kung Fu Panda 2” and of course, Ang Lee’s masterpiece “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.”
A dazzling starring role in one of the year’s most talked-about movies would be achievement enough for most actors, but “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is just one of Yeoh’s many projects released in 2022. She also lent her voice to “Minions: Rise of Gru,” “Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank” and HBO Max’s upcoming “ARK: The Animated Series.” In addition, she stars in Netflix’s “The Witcher: Blood Origin,” series, co-stars in Paul Feig’s “The School of Good and Evil” (due this month) and will round out the year in nothing less than James Cameron’s long promised “Avatar: The Way of Water.”
And given that Yeoh is still driven by the same prodigious work ethic that catapulted her to stardom four decades ago, you can bet the future will be just as prolific. As she recently told Rolling Stone, “There’s always the idea of, ‘I’ll leave it to fate.’ Bulls—. You need to work hard and the harder you work, the luckier you get.”
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