It’s easy to be entranced by Michelle Yeoh’s physical commitment—from the way her body elegantly arcs in combat as master warrior Shu Lien in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to her impressive manipulation of hot dog fingers as Evelyn Wang in Everything Everywhere All at Once. If an actor’s body is their instrument, it’s long been clear that Yeoh is a virtuoso.

But the next time you’re watching one of her films, pay extra attention to the quiet moments. Because the Malaysian actress is even more impressive when she’s telling a whole life story—one of generational trauma, repressed desire, or barely concealed disdain—without moving a muscle. “Your eyes can say more than your mouth will ever be able to,” she says. “Stillness is much more powerful.”

When she calls L’OFFICIEL at the end of October, the 63-year-old is in Dublin, finishing up her last days on the set of The Surgeon, an action-suspense hybrid directed by Roshan Sethi and produced by the John Wick franchise team. Yeoh plays the title character, a retired surgeon who gets abducted and is forced to operate on a mysterious patient. Is this her Wick-ian moment, in which she’ll get to exact maximum carnage? “No,” she says with a laugh. “It’s not that kind of incredible crazy-ass action. This is a different kind of thriller.”

Though she’s starred as a secret agent, a starship captain, and the matriarch of a crime family in her 40 years on screen, Yeoh has never been a surgeon. “I love playing characters that I haven’t done before,” she says. “That was what fascinated me about this particular script. That—and the idea of, when your own life is at stake, how do you use your profession to save yourself?”

After five weeks on set, operating on prosthetics alongside a teaching surgeon, Yeoh is starting to think about what’s next—first, reuniting with her husband and family, and then jumping into the whirlwind that will be the release of Wicked: For Good, the sequel to 2024’s $700-million blockbuster, opening globally on November 21. In the new installment, we get even more of Yeoh as sorceress Madame Morrible, the snake in the metaphorical poppy field. Whereas the first Wicked was tasked with a lot of exposition and world-building, the second drops us right into the action: the immediate fallout of Elphaba’s rejection of the Wizard and Morrible’s plan to restore order in Oz through the suppression and subjugation of animals. Morrible, we learn, has gone from Shiz University Dean to an Oz-wide Comms-and-Propaganda Director.

You need people who will tell you the truth.

“Flip MM around and you get WW; she’s the Wicked Witch,” says Yeoh. “It’s a very interesting role that I’ve never played before. She thinks she’s doing everything for the better of Oz, for her people. But she’s the manipulator. She manipulates the Wizard and Glinda. It’s liberating to play a character who’s like, This is my desire, my ambition, my wish. I don’t give a shit if you don’t understand: Do as I say or you will be the scapegoat!

Paired with the ever-effervescent Glinda (Ariana Grande), Morrible becomes both menace and muse—together they spark some of the film’s funniest moments. “In one scene, I scared [Grande] so much her contact lens popped out,” she says. Pardon? “[Director] Jon [M. Chu] came up to me and said, Scare the shit out of her. Like, really, really scare her. I’m like, Is she ready for this? And when she finally plopped down at the end of the scene, she suddenly had a big tear coming from the corner of her eye and she’s just like, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s my contact lens.”

Provocations from directors like that, Yeoh says, are what make her love her job. “It gives a certain life to what you’re doing, [being in a] place where I can try something new.” Her fondness for a challenge is what led her to take on the role of Morrible originally. “I said, Jon, I don’t sing. And he goes, You like a challenge, right? And I’m like, Oh fine, I’m not gonna argue with that.”

“She claims she doesn’t sing,” Chu tells L’OFFICIEL, “but she’s such a committed actor that she was down to try it. And that’s the kind of person she is. She’s not afraid to fail—she’ll just fight, fight, fight until she gets there.”

Jumping into the unknown was the name of the game in Yeoh’s early career. In Hong Kong action films, she says, there weren’t extensive rehearsals: You’d learn the choreography quickly, already in costume, before the camera rolled. So now when she’s thrown a curveball, she says, “I pretend I’m back in Hong Kong. I’ve been given the steps and now I’m just going to do it.”

Yeoh started modeling and acting in the early ’80s after a promising teenage ballet career was derailed by a spinal injury. After winning the Miss Malaysia contest in 1983, she started booking small film roles and commercials. (Google the 1984 Guy LaRoche watch ad that features Yeoh with her future Police Story 3: Supercop costar Jackie Chan for 30 seconds of peak ’80s vibes.)

Her undeniable talent quickly moved her up the casting sheet and she landed her first starring role in her early 20s: the 1985 Hong Kong action blockbuster Yes, Madam! Yeoh continued to make a name for herself in the martial-arts genre over the next decade, thanks to her ability to perform her own stunts, despite never formally studying martial arts.

In 1997 she got her big Hollywood break via the Bond franchise’s Tomorrow Never Dies. Her character, Chinese secret agent Wai Lin, was unlike the Bond girls before her: an equal, not a romantic prop for Pierce Brosnan’s 007. Just a few years later, Ang Lee tapped her as a lead in the commercially and critically acclaimed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a film that pushed world cinema into the mainstream and made Yeoh an international star.

But it wasn’t until 2022’s Everything Everywhere that she was universally recognized as a generational talent. As Evelyn, a down-on-her-luck laundromat owner who ends up having to save the multiverse, Yeoh showed everyone that she could carry a blockbuster movie and had capital-R range. (“Evelyn was a normal everyday hero,” she says. “Those heroes are so unnoticed. She deserved a voice and to be seen, heard, and understood.”)

It’s liberating to play a character who’s like, This is my desire, my ambition, my wish. I don’t give a shit if you don’t understand.

Yeoh’s Oscar for that performance was historic—she became the first Asian woman to win for Best Actress in the Academy’s 95-year history. “For all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight, this is the beacon of hope and possibilities,” she said. “This is proof that dreams do come true. And ladies, don’t let anybody tell you you are ever past your prime. Never give up.” Yeoh’s acceptance speech was so powerful that Time posted a full transcript the next morning.

Cheering Yeoh on that night—and adding emotional heft to her win—was her long-term partner Jean Todt and costar-turned-friend Jamie Lee Curtis. (If you watched the broadcast, you might remember that as the envelope was being opened, she was seen holding hands tightly with Curtis, with Todt sandwiched in between. “Sometimes in life, you meet someone and know it’s right,” she says now. “And with me and Jamie, it was just like that on day one. She is one of the most truly generous, open-hearted human beings that I have ever met.”) Curtis’s joy for her win spoke volumes about the depth of connections the actress forms wherever she goes.

“I’ve been very blessed to have these amazing people in my life,” she shares. “Jon Chu is another one. He’s almost like my other son.” (“She’s like family to me,” agrees Chu, who has directed Yeoh in both Wicked films as well as in 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians. “She sends my family fruit and gifts all the time. She couldn’t be a better caretaker.”)

Racing executive Todt is another of those amazing people. A ‘love at first sight’ connection, the pair got engaged less than two months after they met in 2004—and finally tied the knot 19 years later. A true romantic, Todt keeps count of every day they’ve known each other. In October, they celebrated 7,777 days. Yeoh says with a laugh that her husband could probably count their relationship down to the minute if asked.

The current UN Special Envoy for Road Safety, Todt has also had a turbocharged career, first as rally co-driver, then as CEO of Ferrari and President of the FIA [Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile]. Yeoh shares that their individual ambitions have been part of what’s led to their successes, both inside and outside of their partnership. “When I’m focused, I’m all about my work,” she says. “And Jean understands that. At the end of the day, he knows that I absolutely love what I do.”

She relies on her nearest and dearest, she says, to give her the thorns as well as the roses. Because a valuable part of what you get from your closest relationships is the real talk. “You need people who will tell you the truth,” she says. “If it’s an acquaintance, they will always be polite.”

I’m at that age where you think, oh, maybe you better reflect. But I’m like, no—hell no. I’m having such a great life.

Yeoh isn’t afraid of total honesty—last year, she made headlines when she spoke publicly about her experience with infertility. “I’m very candid,” she admits. “And I said it very openly because it’s a fact: I wanted to have a family. And telling that story was just me being me, opening up to a reality of how it is and how I dealt with it and how I still deal with it. I mean, even now, I see babies and wish I could have had one. And then you go, It’s OK. But you still have that I wish I could’ve.”

As her life develops, she says, her focus is on living fully. With a packed schedule like hers, she says, “it becomes about making sure that you are healthy enough to be able to do it all. Because the hours are long and the nonstop pressure is great.” Her self-care? Stretching, eye-masks, face-rollers, working out (now in the form of long hikes, as opposed to her former habit of pound-the-pavement runs), enjoying food and wine, meditation (“I learned that from Jet Li”), and, of course, Labubus.

Take one look at Yeoh’s Instagram and you’ll see the little monsters, dotting her feed in between photos with loved ones and project updates. A friend gifted her one last Christmas and—just like that love-at-first-sight feeling she talked about with Curtis and Todt—she says the doll struck her. “I thought, Oh God, it looks like me! I have a photo of me smiling like a Labubu. I got a little obsessed.”

What, you may wonder, does that obsession look like? “When I love something, I want to make sure that I have the family,” she says. “I think it’s very important that you have the family and you keep it together.” How many Labubus are in her current family? “Obviously not enough!” she says with a laugh. (Luckily, she’s got a connect—she’s friendly with the designer Kasing Lung and was featured in a recent campaign for his monsters’ collaboration with Parisian leather goods house Moynat).

A relationship with the fashion world is something Yeoh has had since her early days as a model. Her fearlessness, curiosity, and innate chicness are a potent combo for designers. From oversized suiting to dimensional dresses to iconic cat-eye glasses, Yeoh’s style is a key element to her personal storytelling. “We have clothes that we wear for comfort—but when you talk about high fashion couture, it’s artistry,” she says. “I have great admiration for the creators. The Diors, the Chanels, the LVs, all these artists that come together and give our life more color, more dimensions.”

More is what Yeoh is striving for. More life, more challenge, more honesty, more experience. “Michelle is digging for the truth, no matter what she’s doing,” says Chu. “She’s relentless.”

So much so that the idea of looking back is not really her speed. “I’m at that age where you think, Oh, maybe you better reflect,” she says. “But I’m like, No—hell no. I’m having such a great life. It’s about moving forward.”