Yeoh won a Malaysian pageant in 1983, and arrived in Hong Kong a year later, kick-starting an acting career.

Following her Oscar win for Everything Everywhere All At Once in 2023, Yeoh shared moments of herself celebrating her win with friends and family, with the images revealing her uniquely close relationship with her extended family, which include Dee Poon, her goddaughter and the daughter of her ex-husband Sir Dickson Poon, as well as Poon’s first wife, Marjorie Yang. Both Dee and Yang were in Los Angeles to share the history-making moment with the Malaysian actress.

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Though her past relationships are well documented in Asian media, many of her international fans were unaware of the bond maintained over the years with her ex-husband’s family.

Her lasting and genuine relationships with the family despite her unsuccessful marriage to Dickson Poon speaks to her character and graciousness, and perhaps offers a glimpse into what the marriage was like.

Following her Miss Malaysia World win and representing her country at Miss World the same year, she scored one of her first roles in a television commercial alongside Jackie Chan. She charmed the camera and caught film producers’ attention, ultimately leading her to perform alongside Chan in Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars (1985).

By the time she starred in her third film, Yes, Madam, in 1985, she had already been cast in the lead role. It was because of this film that she met Dickson Poon, co-founder of D&B Films, which produced the movie.

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Poon comes from a prominent Hong Kong family; his father was Poon Ka-kai, an influential jeweller who started Precision Watch and Artland Watch companies. Dickson Poon is active across various industries, including luxury retail – under holding company Dickson Concepts, Poon operates renowned British luxury department store Harvey Nichols and luxury retailer Dickson Watch and Jewellery, the regional outpost of Brooks Brothers and more.

The couple married in February 1988, and Yeoh took a break from the entertainment industry, intending to leave acting altogether. “In 1988, I got married to a wonderful man called Dickson Poon. At 28 years old, I decided maybe it was time to settle down, get married, and have a new life,” Yeoh revealed years later in an interview with Bustle.

She shared that her decision to step away from something she loved at 28 was to pursue something else she wanted even more. “I loved the idea of having kids,” going on to say that her traditional family fuelled this desire to start a family of her own.

Yeoh revealed in the same interview that she was unable to conceive children, and the pair split amicably. “I didn’t want for us to be bitter 10 years down the road … And when you have the realisation [that you can’t have kids], you have to deal with it. You deal with the curveballs that are thrown at you,” she continued in the interview.

Following her divorce in 1992, Yeoh returned to the silver screens, picking up where she left off with an action-packed role in the film Supercop with Jackie Chan. And the rest, as they say, is history.