Michelle Yeoh

Born: 6 August 1962
Where: Perak, Malaysia

The former Miss Malaysia impressed Western audiences as the lethal colonel in the James Bond blockbuster Tomorrow Never Dies.

She went on to win another legion of fans as the acrobatic warrior Yu Shu Lien in director Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Hailed by producer-director Oliver Stone as "my all-time favourite actress", Yeoh studied ballet from the age of four and spoke English rather than Chinese.

As a teenager, she competed nationally in squash, swimming and diving before dance drew her to accept at place at London's Royal Academy of Dance.

Returning to the Far East following an injury, she won the Miss Malaysia beauty pageant title after she was secretly entered by her mother.

Her first film work was a 1984 commercial with martial arts star Jackie Chan and she went on to shoot Hong Kong action movies, including Police Assassin and Dynamite Fighters.

She left acting for a brief period for an ill-fated marriage to D&B film executive Dickson Poon before returning to star opposite Jackie Chan in Police Story 3: Supercop.

(Yeoh, who has no stunt training, relies on her dance moves and is one of the few women Chan will allow to perform her own action sequences.)

The highest paid actress in Hong Kong, she made her US feature debut the English-language version of Supercop.

In 1997, she was cast opposite Pierce Brosnan in the Bond outing Tomorrow Never Dies and went on to star in director Ang Lee's art house smash Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

In 2002, she starred and made her producer debut in the English-language action movie The Touch.

Recent work includes the role of the kindly Mamemah in Rob Marshall's adaptation of the bestselling novel Memoirs of a Geisha.