It’s Her Time: Michelle Yeoh in Busan

It’s not every day that one gets to see an Oscar-winning actor fiddling with a Rubik’s Cube in front of the cameras. But that’s what Michelle Yeoh did before settling into her seat at a press conference in Busan, with the toy serving as a reminder of the reason behind her presence at the Korean port-city’s annual international film festival.

The Malaysian-Chinese actor is in town to receive the festival’s honorary Asian Filmmaker of the Year award. She is also promoting It’s My Time, the mainland Chinese comedy where she plays a pensioner who finds her life upended – for better or worse – by discovering late fame through her talent in solving the cube-shaped puzzle.

“I have spent many years abroad, working on American movies and television,” said Yeoh, who followed up her Best Actress win at the Academy Awards in 2022 for her radiant performance in Everything Everywhere All At Once with appearances in Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting In Venice and the Wicked franchise.

“With the opportunity of working with [Chinese] producer Wen Muye and and also the [Hong Kong] producer Peter Lam who’s a good friend of mine, I had this good way to come back to the Asian market, which has always been very important to me.”

It’s My Time was released in China in June before making its international bow at Toronto.  Yeoh was doing double duty there, also gracing the world premiere of the Ireland-set The Surgeon, in which she plays a physician forced to battle gun-wielding gangsters with nothing but her scalpel and her knowledge of the frailty of the human body.

While the two films bear testament to her range – and she thrives in both, in very different ways – they also illustrate her reputation as an actor able to approach movies from diverse cultural milieus with ease. “I think I had spent quite a few years trying to build a bridge from the east to the west, and from the west to the east. So hopefully the bridge will stay there,” she said.

She believes things have progressed somewhat compared to the time when she made her Hollywood breakthrough in Tomorrow Never Dies. “I thought the doors would be flung open, but the roles that came to me were still very stereotypical.” Yeoh said more can still be done to broaden Asia’s presence abroad.

“I think there’s quite a few of us trying to step up to that challenge and we’re making headway – and the challenge is not behind us.” Yeoh was last in Busan for Luc Besson’s 2011 Aung San Suu Kyi biopic The Lady. “It’s not just in front of the camera but behind the camera. There are so many narratives, so many stories to be told, and DPs and writers could come forward with their work to showcase what we’re capable of.”

When asked whether she would entertain ideas of working with Korean filmmakers, Yeoh affirmed: “Of course, I would love to work with director Park [Chan-wook] and director Bong [Joon-ho].”

Yeoh said the Korean film she looked forward to watching the most is Possible Love by Lee Chang-dong. By happy coincidence, the director was sitting on her left at the Busan International Film Festival’s opening ceremony. On her right was director Ann Hui, who received the Camellia Award, the prize dedicated to filmmakers for their representation of women in their work.

The actor said she started reminiscing with Hong Kong filmmaker Hui about their collaboration in 1996, a time still years before her international breakthrough. “Last night we were walking down memory lane about The Stunt Woman, when Ann and I were trying to pay homage to the stunt people – you never get to see their faces but their work makes us actors look so good.

“In that film I almost broke my back – so those moments give you a big pause in your life, to think what you want out of it. There’s a moment when I thought about stepping away from all this.”

But she didn’t – which was all the more remarkable given how she was to suffer from yet another potentially career-ending injury three years later while shooting Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

While those gravity-defying days are seemingly over, Yeoh’s legacy as an action star remains. She made her own metatextual dig at her on-screen persona in Everything Everywhere All At Once. In her upcoming appearance in the TV mini-series Blade Runner 2099, she plays a Replicant commissioned to hunt down rogue elements of her cyborg kind.

Yeoh said the briefness of her stay in Busan was down to her commitment to promote Blade Runner 2099 at Comicon in New York. “It’s an amazing journey,” she said. “To work with a great cast, talents like Hunter Schafer, and Silka Luisa, who’s the showrunner, and Sir Ridley Scott who welcomed us into this world – it’s a great joy.”