Michelle Yeoh is a Malaysian-born actress who has had an incredibly successful career. While she got her start doing Hong Kong action films, she gained international recognition as a Bond girl in 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies and hit it big with Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000. In recent years, she played key roles in Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and she has received critical acclaim for her starring role in Everything Everywhere All at Once, including a Best Actress win at the Oscars. The actress has also appeared in some TV shows, most notably Star Trek: Discovery and The Witcher: Blood Origin. Due to a career that started in 1984, Yeoh has made tons of money. In that vein, let's look at Michelle Yeoh's net worth in 2024.
What is Michelle Yeoh's net worth in 2024?: $40 million (estimate)
Michelle Yeoh's estimated net worth, according to sources such as Celebrity Net Worth, is estimated to be around $40 million. That is unsurprising, simply because Yeoh's career spans four and a half decades at this point since she is still active. Additionally, tons of her movies made and are still making money. Yeoh has had success throughout her entire life and she was also successful in other fields, including dancing and beauty pageants.
However, before we come to success with movies, let's look at how Michelle Yeoh came to this net worth of $40 million.
Michelle Yeoh's early life
The world-famous actress was born in Ipoh, Malaysia, on Aug. 6, 1962. Michelle Yeoh was raised by a lawyer and a politician, meaning that her childhood did not have a lot of struggles with money. Due to that, Yeoh was able to enjoy certain things that were fairly privileged in her surroundings, like ballet and dance from a very young age. Additionally, she was able to speak English on a regular basis in her home, and that helped her a lot during the movie career Yeoh was able to have. When it comes to education, Yeoh was able to go to London with her family and study at the UK's Royal Academy of Dance in London, majoring in ballet. Unfortunately, a spinal injury kept her from going professional in ballet, but she received a BA degree in creative arts.
Michelle Yeoh's movie career
When it comes to the start of her movie career, it came when Michelle Yeoh was already famous in her country, as she won the Miss Malaysia World in 1983. That brought her to the attention of Hong Kong production companies. Initially going by Michelle Khan, she made 18 movies in 13 years, despite a half-decade hiatus. She was famous for doing her own stunts and for getting the lead role in just her third movie, Yes, Madam from 1985. All of this brought Yeoh to international attention, and when a new James Bond movie was in production, she was cast as the Bond girl and changed her stage name back to Michelle Yeoh. The movie was Tomorrow Never Dies and Yeoh played alongside Pierce Brosnan, in a movie that made $333 million against a $100 million budget.
In 2000, Michelle Yeoh starred in her first Mandarin-language martial arts film, the critically acclaimed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Yeoh received a BAFTA Best Actress nomination for the film, which was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won four of them. She didn't speak Mandarin at the time and had to learn the lines phonetically.
The 2005 epic Memoirs of a Geisha saw Yeoh play a supporting character, but it was still an amazing role for the actress in a movie that was both critically acclaimed and made a ton of money at the box office, earning $162 million. That money is even greater when we take into account that for a long time, the movie was prohibited from being shown in China, which is a huge market. The movie also had three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe, and while none went to Yeoh directly, it was still a major achievement for her.
Michelle Yeoh stars doing TV
Nowadays, Yeoh splits her time between doing movies and TV, in which she got involved as recently as 2015. From 2017 until 2020, she had a recurring role in Star Trek: Discovery, playing in 24 episodes over their three-year run. She also appears in four episodes of The Witcher: Blood Origins and has three TV shows coming out in 2023.
When it comes to movies, she played a key supporting role in the 2021 Marvel movie Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and has several major pictures coming out soon after starring in Everything Everywhere All at Once, which was nominated for 11 Oscars and won seven, including Best Picture. Yeoh herself won Best Actress after winning the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy. She is also locked up for the next two Avatar movies, coming out in 2024 and 2026, as well as both of the Wicked movies that are coming out in 2024 and 2025. Last but certainly not least, Yeoh is set to provide her voice in the upcoming Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.
Overall, Yeoh's career had it all, from modeling, dancing, ballet, voice acting, and appearing on the big screen. From relatively small productions in Hong Kong to massive Hollywood sets, Yeoh has done it all and succeeded in absolutely everything, and she shows no sign of stopping.
Nevertheless, was Michelle Yeoh's net worth in 2024 a surprise?
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