'I still love doing stunts. But I've grown older, and wiser'

Michelle Yeoh, star of Everything Everywhere All at Once’ and Wicked’, talks to Louis Chilton about her new Star Trek spin-off Section 31’ and the dangers of playing action heroes

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“I don’t let people tell me what I can and can’t do,” says Michelle Yeoh, in a voice like polished steel.

It was true 40 years ago, when she made her name as one of Hong Kong’s foremost action stars, a rare stunt maestra in an industry of men. It was true when Yeoh broke into Hollywood, redefining the term “Bond girl” as the all-action Wai Lin in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997). And it was true two years ago, when Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win a Best Actress Oscar, having fronted a thoroughly unconventional awards-sweeper – Everything Everywhere All at Once, in which she played a laundromat owner with the ability to travel across the multiverse.

“It’s like, yes, you’re 60,” Yeoh says. “So that means... what? You should only play grandmothers? I’m like... ‘What? Please! The window is that way – you can jump out of it if you want.’”

As she says this, Yeoh throws out an arm towards the window of the opulent London hotel room we’re in. The Malaysian actor, 62, is sitting next to me on a sofa, her legs curled up underneath her. It’s natural, I suppose, that leaping out of windows would be on Yeoh’s mind: just weeks ago, this act punctuated the highnote climax of the hit movie musical Wicked.

The film saw Yeoh play Madame Morrible, the scheming head of a magical university. “There was great pressure with Wicked,” she says, “because it’s such a beloved musical. You need the right people to come together; you need a visionary.” The film’s director, Jon M Chu, was exactly that visionary, Yeoh says.

I’m a little surprised by how innocuous she appears – if only because she seems so physically formidable in action. I’ve watched this relatively petite sexagenarian fustigate bad guys with the ease of a barrel-chested WWE wrestler. More