Michelle Yeoh (born 6 August 1962; age 63) is a Chinese-Malaysian actress who played Philippa Georgiou, as well as the mirror universe Philippa Georgiou in Star Trek: Discovery. She reprised the former role in the Star Trek: Short Treks episode "The Brightest Star", and the latter role in Star Trek: Section 31.
Born Yeoh Choo Kheng (Chinese: 楊紫瓊) in Malaysia, she won the Miss Malaysia beauty contest in 1983, and represented her home country at the Miss World 1983 pageant in London, where she placed eighteenth. Her first acting job was in a television commercial with Jackie Chan, which gained the interest of Hong Kong movie producers.
She began her film career starring in Hong Kong action movies, such as Magnificent Warriors (1987), Police Story 3: Supercop (1992), The Heroic Trio (1993), and Butterfly and Sword (1993).
She rose to international fame thanks to her English-language debut role in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997, with Teri Hatcher and Vincent Schiavelli). This was followed by the success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Her subsequent Hollywood roles included Memoirs of a Geisha (2005, with Cary-Hiroyuki), Sunshine (2007), The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008, with the voice of Freda Foh Shen), and Babylon A.D. (2008).
Yeoh experienced a career resurgence in the 2010s, when she appeared in Netflix' Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny and Marco Polo (both 2016). In 2017, she cameoed as Aleta Ogord in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (starring Zoë Saldana, with Gregg Henry and Stan Lee).
She then had roles in films such as Crazy Rich Asians (2018, with Harry Shum, Jr.), Last Christmas (2019), Boss Level (2020, with Annabelle Wallis), Gunpowder Milkshake (2021), and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021, with the voice of Dee Bradley Baker).
In 2022, Yeoh starred in Everything Everywhere All at Once, alongside Jamie Lee Curtis and Harry Shum, Jr., for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Curtis won Best Supporting Actress for the same film.
Also in 2022, she appeared in Netflix' The School for Good and Evil (2022), and co-starred in Netflix' The Witcher: Blood Origin. In 2023, she appeared in the Disney+ miniseries American Born Chinese. She then appeared in the films A Haunting in Venice (2023) and Wicked.
Her voice work includes the Soothsayer in Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011, with James Hong, Victor Garber, Maury Sterling, Fred Tatasciore, and Lauren Tom), Airazor in Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (2023, with Ron Perlman and David Sobolov), and Mei-Yin Li in Ark: The Animated Series (2024, with Dee Bradley Baker, Thomas Dekker, and Karl Urban).
In 2013, Yeoh was awarded the Commander of the Order of Loyalty to the Crown of Malaysia. In 2024, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Joe Biden.
Star Trek appearances[]
Appearances as Philippa Georgiou
Appearances as Philippa Georgiou (mirror)
- DIS:
- "The Wolf Inside" (Season 1)
- "Vaulting Ambition"
- "What's Past Is Prologue"
- "The War Without, The War Within"
- "Will You Take My Hand?"
- "Point of Light" (Season 2)
- "Saints of Imperfection"
- "Light and Shadows"
- "If Memory Serves"
- "The Red Angel"
- "Perpetual Infinity"
- "Such Sweet Sorrow"
- "Such Sweet Sorrow, Part 2"
- "Far From Home" (Season 3)
- "People of Earth"
- "Forget Me Not"
- "Die Trying"
- "Scavengers"
- "The Sanctuary"
- "Terra Firma, Part 1"
- "Terra Firma, Part 2"
- Star Trek: Section 31