Actor Michelle Yeoh has been named TIME Magazine’s Icon of the Year, with her impressive lineup of work and films ranging from Jonny To’s 1993 Hong Kong cop drama, Executioners, to being the Bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997, and the mother-in-law in the 2018 smash-hit Crazy Rich Asians.
Then in 2021 she further cemented her Hollywood superstar career, with a lead role in Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Yeoh told TIME that she’d spent a large part of her acting career subsumed into stereotypical Asian roles and turning down roles that perpetuated harmful tropes about Asian women.
“It shouldn’t be about my race, but it has been a battle,” she said.
Yeoh is a favourite to take home Best Actress for her role in Everything Everywhere All at Once at next year’s Oscars. If she does, she will be the first Asian woman to win the award.
“I’ve thought about it,” she told TIME. “And not just me—I feel like my full Asian community has thought about it. They come up to me and they say, ‘You’re doing it for us.’
“When you get an opportunity like this, you have to pour your heart and soul into it, because you don’t know when the next chance is,” she said, referring to Everything Everywhere All at Once. “I think that is my biggest fear: Please don’t let this be the one and only.”
“It’s not about needing it,” she added, when asked about her Oscar dreams. “It’s that feeling that you don’t have to explain: it’s love from other people. My arms are out open.”
TIME’s Entertainer of the Year went to the four members of K-Pop group, Blackpink – Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa, and Rosй.