Michelle Yeoh glad she's no longer typecast as 'Asian-looking'

IANS

Oscar-winning actress Michelle Yeoh thinks the ‘best thing’ about her awards success is that she is no longer only receiving scripts for ‘Asian-looking’ characters.

The 60-year-old star won the Best Actress category award at a string of ceremonies this year, including the Oscars, Screen Actors Guild Awards and Golden Globes for her role as Evelyn Quan Wang in Everything Everywhere All at Once, and she is pleased to be offering a wider variety of roles.

“The best thing that has happened is I receive a script that doesn’t describe the character as a Chinese or Asian-looking person. We are actors. We are supposed to act. We are supposed to step into roles that are given to us and do our job as best we can. That, for me, is the biggest step forward,” she said during the Kering Women in Motion talks at the Cannes Film Festival.

Yeoh reflected on her first time at Cannes over 20 years ago with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and said she felt it was ‘quite obvious’ Hollywood wasn’t ready to celebrate Asian actors back then.