Breaking the glass ceiling

Oscar front runners Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan reflect on how far Hollywood has come in terms of Asian representation

- Alison de Souza

LOS ANGELES - Asian actors are off to a roaring start as Hollywood's awards season kicks off this year.

At the Golden Globes on Jan 10, Michelle Yeoh, 60, became the first Malaysian to win the Best Actress gong for her role in the sciencefiction comedy Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022).

Her Vietnamese-American costar Ke Huy Quan, 51, took home Best Supporting Actor, and both are widely considered front runners for the Oscars on March 12.

The film is also a hot favourite for the night's Best Film honours.

In a story praised for shattering Asian stereotypes, Yeoh and Quan play a Chinese immigrant couple who run a laundromat in the United States and find themselves drawn into a battle of good versus evil across parallel dimensions.

Later in 2023, the pair will reunite for a much anticipated Asian-led action-comedy television series on Disney+, American Born Chinese, the story of an Asian-American teenager (Ben a war Wang) plunged into involving figures from Chinese mythology.

An adaptation of the Gene Luen Yang graphic novel, it is directed and executive-produced by AsianAmerican film-maker Destin Daniel Cretton of Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings (2021) fame, who has also been tapped to direct Marvel Studios' Avengers: The Kang Dynasty (2025).

It also stars Daniel Wu, Yeo Yann Yann, Chin Han and another Everything Everywhere All At Once cast member, Stephanie Hsu.