Bond Girls
The Best of 007's Girls

Wai Lin played by Michelle Yeoh in 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies

Wai Lin played by Michelle Yeoh

Credited as “Michelle Kahn” in some of her early work, Michelle Yeoh was in 2008 named as the best action heroine of all time by movie review website Rotten Tomatoes.

Wai Lin played by Michelle Yeoh

Early in life, Yeoh wanted to become a ballerina, but after studying in London at the Royal Academy of Dance, she injured her spine and had to switch her focus to something other than dance. She eventually received a B.A. degree in Creative Arts. At 21 she won the Miss Malaysia beauty pageant and competed in the Miss World pageant later that year. Afterwards, she appeared in a TV commercial with Jackie Chan and captured the eye of a film production company.

Wai Lin played by Michelle Yeoh

Yeoh’s dance training, however, prepared her well for her roles in action movies, including 1997’s Tomorrow Never Dies, in which she starred as Colonel Wai Lin opposite Pierce Brosnan as Bond. She performed all her own fight scenes, and wanted to perform her own stunts, but did not due to insurance regulations. In Tomorrow Never Dies, Yeoh’s character is a James Bond ally, an accomplished Chinese spy. Brosnan was so impressed with her combat acting skills that he referred to her as a “female James Bond.”

Tomorrow Never Dies was the first Bond film where the title had nothing to do with any of Ian Fleming’s work. In fact, it came about by accident, when a mistaken title “Tomorrow Never Lies” was substituted on a fax for original title “Tomorrow Never Knows,” a Beatles’ song. Someone misread the fax as “Tomorrow Never Dies,” and that was the title that stuck.

Since the late 90s, Yeoh has continued to make movies. She is perhaps most famous for the 2000 movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the 2005 movie Memoirs of a Geisha.