Michelle Yeoh on the role Jackie Chan turned down in Everything Everywhere All at Once, and how it’s finally made her cool with the kids
- Michelle Yeoh, star of Golden Globes-nominated Everything Everywhere All at Once, reveals how, after 40 years of making films, she finally feels cool
- She reveals what she messaged Jackie Chan after he turned down the lead role in the comedy-drama, and why she likes to say sorry – and thank you – to her body
Michelle Yeoh was having a flashback. Not one of the acid variety, but it was pretty intense all the same.
She was seated in the middle of the Paramount Theatre in Austin in the US state of Texas, in March for the premiere of Everything Everywhere All at Once, nerves frayed, worried about how people would react to her performance. Well, “performances”, since Yeoh plays half a dozen characters in the movie. Would the audience laugh in the right spots? Would they find her funny?
Braced for boos, she was instead ecstatic when the audience erupted into cheers.
“Forty years, man!” Yeoh says, letting out a big laugh, thinking about how long she has been making movies – and worrying about what people think when she tries something that is outside her comfort zone.
In Everything Everywhere All at Once, she plays Evelyn, a stressed-out laundromat owner trying to save an imperilled multiverse and heal a frayed relationship with her daughter.