Yeo Yann Yann: Iron Lady makes it to Hollywood
She’s battled everything from bad school grades and criticism over her looks, to ageism and postpartum depression, to finally find mainstream success
Helmi Yusof
ONCE UPON A TIME, ACTORS were scared of getting older. Too many lines around the eyes spelt the loss of lead roles, the dwindling of fanbases, and the revision of studio contracts. White hair and age spots decreed one had to step aside for young blood and step into small supporting parts instead.
But in this post-monoculture world, our screens big and small are no longer dominated by one age group, body type, race, gender, nationality or sexuality. A self-empowered audience – inspired by social movements and social media visibility – demands greater representation of different demographics.
These shifts in attitudes helped lay the groundwork for Michelle Yeoh to star in Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) and win an Oscar at 60. They helped Angela Bassett at 64 earn the first Oscar nomination for a Marvel character in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). They helped Tom Cruise, 60, soar to record box-office highs in Top Gun: Maverick (2022).
Yet in 2017 – just six years ago – stage and film actress Yeo Yann Yann was feeling the effects of ageism in the film industry. Then 40, she addressed these concerns in a one-woman stage play titled Actor, Forty produced by The Necessary Stage. It was a largely fictional, fractionally autobiographical story of a middle-aged actress whose career was in the doldrums – despite having received major awards and acclaim for her work.
Now 46, Yeo says: “Ageism doesn’t just pertain to women or the entertainment industry. It’s a timeless struggle affecting both men and women across all industries. There’s this idea that once you’re past a certain age, you should not be doing something anymore because it should be done by someone younger.
“And this problem is funny and surprising to me. It feels as if the problem has been there all the time and most people have not been able to beat it – when, in fact, ageing is something all human beings have to go through.”
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Asked if the film and TV industry has ever pressured her to get Botox injections to look younger, Yeo is matter-of-fact about it: “It all depends on what the character requires. If the role calls for it, then it has to be done. As an actress, I’m committed to the role.”
Yeo currently stars in the Hollywood hit TV show American Born Chinese (ABC) on Disney+. The eight-episode series follows an ordinary teenage boy Jin (Ben Wang) who gets entangled in the mythological quarrel between the Monkey King (Daniel Wu) and Guanyin (Michelle Yeoh) played out in his high school. Yeo plays Jin’s mother who dotes on him and teaches him to be strong, which ultimately steels him for the final showdown with the nefarious Bull Demon.
With a star-studded cast that also includes Singapore’s Chin Han, Oscar winner Ke Huay Quan and Malaysian comedian Ronny Chieng, the series has received unanimous praise from TV critics who variously describe it as “charming”, “delightfully zippy” and “a hell of a lot of fun”. The success of the show even snagged Yeo an invitation from US President Joe Biden to the White House for a special screening of ABC in celebration of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May 2023.
The cycle of ups & downs
ABC marks Yeo’s first Hollywood TV project whose shoot ran for four solid months in Los Angeles. Prior to this, she was shooting Havoc, a British-American action movie starring Tom Hardy and Forest Whitaker that’s slated to open later this year.
To the outsider, Yeo seems to have reached a good level of success. But the actress hesitates to even use the “s” word in reference to herself. She says: “I don’t know what ‘success’ is. When I think about whether I’ve succeeded, I realise that my life has always gone up and down. It’s never been a straight path towards anything. Anytime I go up, I’ll definitely go down. Anytime life seems to get easier, new challenges arrive… So I don’t know what ‘success’ means. I just consider myself lucky to be doing the job I’ve wanted to do since I was a child – acting.”
Born in Malaysia to the family that owns Kukup Seafood, the biggest seafood supplier in Johor Bahru, Yeo came to Singapore at the age of 19 to study mass communications at a private school. She flunked the exams repeatedly before deciding to enrol instead in the Intercultural Theatre Institute to study acting under the legendary dramatist Kuo Pao Kun.
Acting had always been a passion of hers, even though she was often told that she was “not talented enough”, “not pretty enough”, and just “too short” to make it big – she’s about 1.56 metres tall. “But thankfully, I was stubborn enough to stick to my guns, so I switched off all that negativity and soldiered on.”
Upon graduation, her career was slow to take off, but she eventually scored two starring roles in family drama Singapore Dreaming (2006) directed by Colin Goh and Woo Yen Yen, and getai musical 881 (2007) directed by Royston Tan. Both films were commercial and critical successes. They made movie lovers notice the talented and energetic Yeo, who has a way of immersing herself in her roles so that they become a second skin.
But it was the 2013 film Ilo Ilo – Anthony Chen’s luminous domestic drama that scored the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival – that turned Yeo into a bona fide movie star. Playing the exasperated mother of a naughty 10-year-old boy, Yeo’s character resonated with young parents everywhere. The film won dozens of other awards around the world, including a Golden Horse for Best Supporting Actress for Yeo, and turned her into a household name.
Yeo, who was already married to Hong Kong action choreographer Ma Yuk-sing, was pregnant during the shooting of Ilo Ilo. When shooting wrapped, she gave birth to a baby girl. But instead of celebrating her new triumphs, she sank into postpartum depression. She was forced to take things slow just as her career was heating up.
She recalls: “I had to rest for a long period of time. I told myself that if I wanted to continue acting, I had to become healthier. I had to put my work aside and work on my emotions and take care of my child.”
She found a psychologist to help with her depression, and went on to find smaller roles in several films such as sex comedy Rubbers (2014), dramatic anthology Distance (2015) and sports drama Lee Chong Wei (2018) about the Malaysian badminton champion. Yet nothing came close to matching the impact of Ilo Ilo, leading Yeo to think that her career was waning.
Lightning strikes twice
It was then that Anthony Chen came knocking again with a new 2019 project titled Wet Season. This time, it was the lead role of a secondary school teacher struggling to conceive with her husband (Christopher Lee), when one of her students (Koh Jia Ler) becomes infatuated with her.
The daring drama is memorable for many reasons – not least because it contains a sex scene in which the student forces himself on the teacher while she is still reeling from the death of her father-in-law and the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. The teacher and student begin an affair, with poor consequences.
Yeo plays her part in the May-December fling with delicacy and finesse, making the audience understand the depth of her grief and her need to find solace in the arms of her young student. It sealed her reputation as a serious actress willing to go to any lengths to convey a story’s truth.
When the awards season came round, Yeo unsurprisingly won the Golden Horse Award for Best Actress, beating out fan favourites Angelica Lee, Lu Hsueh-feng and Gingle Wang. She says: “Every role has its challenges, every role… The sex scene in itself was not all that challenging. The challenge of every character actually lies in the communication process: Are you able to tell the truth of the scene together with your director, your co-stars, as well as everyone else involved in the scene?
“Because if any single part of a scene is not communicated well, the entire scene just falls apart and the audience instantly ceases to believe in what they’re watching. So that’s the real challenge: communication.”
But just when the success of Wet Season was helping to build some buzz again around her career, another tragedy struck, this time on a global scale: Covid-19 brought the world to a standstill and scuttled all her projects: “So if you think my career is always on the up and up, you’re wrong. I can only tell you I’ve managed to stay alive throughout these ups and down, and I’ve come to expect them as part and parcel of my career, and that they will never go away.”
She says: “I really count myself lucky to be able to be an actor – which I know is more unpredictable than most careers. But I still enjoy the privilege of searching for a character, digging into myself to understand the person that I’m going to portray, thinking of others and their motivations… I always believe we have 1,000 different kinds of colours within us. And when people say: ‘Oh, you’re a more fiery person, you’re very red’, actually they’re only seeing one side of us. We have so many other shades within us that we can pull out all the other times.”
Roles in her 50s and beyond
With two Hollywood projects under her belt, does she plan to move to Los Angeles as other actors such as Yeoh, Chin Han, and Tan Kheng Hua have done?
“We’ll have to see. For now, I think I’ll be moving back and forth between Singapore and Los Angeles depending on the project. My daughter is schooling here, after all, and motherhood is naturally a top priority. That said, I’m open to all sorts of roles in both film and theatre. I started off in theatre, playing all sorts of roles from that of a five-year-old to an 80-year-old, so I enjoy the versatility that theatre offers me. And I still believe one of my biggest reasons for being an actress is to give a voice to people who have less of a voice.”
Her role models – Cate Blanchett, Maggie Cheung, Deannie Yip, and of course, Yeoh – have all defied the ageism and sexism of the entertainment industry to play a variety of roles across a variety of genres throughout their careers. She sees herself closely following their footsteps, taking on meaty roles in her 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond – and probably scooping some awards while she’s at it.
Does she think life would get easier from here on, now that mainstream TV and film success has finally arrived at her doorstep?
“I don’t know. Does life really get easier? It always seems to me that when something gets easier, new things will come and present new complications. I don’t buy this belief that life gets easier as time goes by. Some things get easier, some things get harder, and it’s just the process of life.”
Photography: Ivanho Harlim, assisted by Shysi Novita. Styling & art directions: CK Make up: Clarence Lee Hair: Jimmy Yap, Kimistry Hair Boutique
American Born Chinese is showing on Disney+.
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