The First Chinese Woman to Win an Oscar

After decades of fighting for better representation, Asian actors are finally making a mark at the Oscars. Michelle Yeoh won best actress in 2022 for her portrayal of a Chinese laundromat owner facing an IRS audit in Everything Everywhere All at Once.

But Yeoh is not the first openly Asian actor to win an Oscar. Here’s a look at those who came before her, including one who hid her identity and another who won with a role that fed into stereotypes.

Michelle Yeoh

In a career that has included roles in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Crazy Rich Asians, Yeoh made history at Sunday’s Oscars when she won the award for best actress. Yeoh won for her starring turn in A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, a psychedelic sci-fi adventure about a Chinese immigrant laundromat owner who must connect with versions of herself from other universes to save her family and the multiverse from destruction.

While her Hong Kong films helped propel her to stardom, it wasn’t until the release of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that Yeoh became known globally. She has since starred in a string of popular international films.

The Malaysian-born Yeoh has also earned critical acclaim for her work on Broadway and in television. She has won multiple awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and Los Angeles Film Critics Association, as well as a Golden Globe nomination.

Despite her numerous accolades, Yeoh has faced obstacles when it comes to Hollywood opportunities. She turned down a number of Hollywood roles because she did not want to play any roles that perpetuated stereotypes about Asian women, including insensitive and negative portrayals. She only accepted her first leading role in a Hollywood film, the 1998 action movie Tomorrow Never Dies, after being convinced by director Ang Lee to take the part.

It took Yeoh nearly 20 years to win her next lead role, which came in this year’s Crazy Rich Asians, a film that catapulted the cast into the global spotlight. The 2023 lead actress race was neck and neck between Yeoh, Andrea Riseborough (To Leslie), Michelle Williams (Blonde), and TAR’s Cate Blanchett throughout the season, but Yeoh won out in the end with support from many critics’ groups.

The award for best actress went to a woman of color for the first time in over 85 years, and Yeoh is the first Asian woman to win that prestigious prize. Previous winners include a biracial actress, Merle Oberon, who won the award for 1935’s The Dark Angel but spent her life passing for white. This week’s Clarified episode rewinds through Hollywood history to spotlight other actresses of color, including Anna May Wong and Yeoh’s own mother, Janet, who worked as a ballet dancer and model.

Merle Oberon

In 1934, Merle Oberon became the first Asian actress to be nominated for an Oscar in a category that included black actors. She won the award for her role in the film Dark Angel. Her victory marked the end of a long journey through an industry that was often racist. Oberon, who hid her Indian heritage throughout her career, won the award even though many people believed she was white.

When she was born, Oberon was Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson, the daughter of a British army officer and a Ceylonese (now Sri Lankan) woman. Her grandmother raised her and gave her the nickname Queenie. Her childhood was tough. She struggled to fit in at school, where her classmates taunted her for her mixed race appearance. Oberon escaped her harsh circumstances by honing her posh accent and lightening her skin with bleach creams. Her makeover also paid off with male suitors, some of whom didn’t dump her after learning her true race.

It was not unusual for movie stars to change their physical appearance in order to hide their ethnicity at the time. Rita Hayworth underwent electrolysis and used bleach to lighten her hair and skin, and Oberon went even further. In her early movies, she lied about her birthplace and was referred to as “Miss O’Brien”. She changed her name to Merle Oberon and passed herself off as a high-class white woman from Tasmania who had moved to India after her father died in a hunting accident.

Oberon’s white-passing strategy enabled her to become a success in the Hollywood film industry, where she was often denied roles that aligned with her race in favor of white actors who performed in yellowface. It wasn’t until after her death that the truth about her South Asian heritage became public knowledge, when photographs and family records revealed her Indian background.

It’s hard to say what led Merle Oberon to keep her Asian identity a secret for so many years, but it seems that she was driven by a desire to be successful and a fear of backlash from a racist entertainment industry. In a documentary, filmmaker Maree Delofski compared her to actor Luise Rainer, who won an Academy Award in 1937 for The Good Earth and was criticized for using yellowface.

Katharine Hepburn

Katharine Hepburn was one of the most iconic actresses in cinema history. She won a record 12 Academy Award nominations (tied with Barbra Streisand) and four wins, including the prestigious Best Actress award for both Morning Glory (1934) and The Lion in Winter (1962). Hepburn was born into a freethinking family and was raised to respect independence. Her mother was a suffragette and her father, a physician specializing in otolaryngology, encouraged his wife to speak her mind and pursue her acting ambitions. Hepburn made her Broadway debut in 1927 and was soon a star. She went on to appear in many plays and earned a reputation as a versatile, intelligent performer who was comfortable on both the stage and screen.

After a few flops in the late 30s, Hepburn’s image was beginning to falter. However, she reclaimed her top billing with a role that was specifically written for her in The Philadelphia Story (1940). Its success led to a lucrative contract with MGM and rekindled her mass appeal. The film also allowed Hepburn to showcase her sharp characterization skills and great romantic chemistry with co-star Cary Grant.

In the 1950s, Hepburn continued to work steadily and received numerous Oscar nods for her performances in such films as Summertime, Pat and Mike, and On Golden Pond. In addition, she starred in the highly acclaimed 1956 production of Eugene O’Neill’s drama A Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Despite her popularity, Hepburn was no stranger to controversy. Her public stance on abortion and her long-term personal relationship with co-star Spencer Tracy brought criticism from both the press and fellow celebrities.

Hepburn would win another Oscar in 1968 for her performance as a Southern family’s reaction to their daughter’s African-American fiancé in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, but the actress was ill at the time of the ceremony and was represented by director Anthony Harvey.

She reclaimed her Oscar in the same category for The Lion in Winter the following year, but once again was unable to attend the awards ceremony due to illness. Her friend and producer Lawrence Weingarten accepted the award on her behalf.

Luise Rainer

The first actress of any race to win back-to-back Oscars, Rainer was a pioneer in many ways. She was also a tireless political activist. NPR’s Jasmine Garsd reports that the two-time Best Actress winner died Monday at her home in London at age 104.

Born in Germany and trained by Max Reinhardt’s theater ensemble in 1930s Vienna, Rainer quickly earned acclaim as a screen actress. By the time she arrived in Hollywood in 1935 as part of a wave of European artists, writers, and intellectuals fleeing Nazi persecution, some filmmakers thought her a possible successor to MGM’s star, Greta Garbo.

But unlike Garbo, Rainer never fell into the trap of playing sexy and stolid ice queens that MGM used to cultivate for its female stars. She had a talent for portraying strong, independent women in films such as The Great Ziegfeld and The Good Earth. But she soon became typecast in movies that superficially portrayed her as a long-suffering wife or mother, and the escapist trifles MGM forced her to do grew out of step with the changing social realities of the day.

After her second Academy Award win, Rainer refused to attend the Oscar banquet because she didn’t believe she deserved the honor. She didn’t want to accept a gold statuette that fed into a stereotype of Asian women as docile and subservient. Her son later reported that she etched her name into the statuette and threw it away.

Fortunately, Rainer found love and stability in her marriage to publisher Robert Knittel. After 1945, she largely left acting behind and lived out her remaining years in Switzerland and England, though she continued to make occasional guest appearances on television. In 1997, a then-octogenarian Rainer made a brief comeback in Karoly Makk’s The Gambler, based on Dostoyevsky’s novel of the same name.

Despite her remarkable life, it would be easy to dismiss Rainer as another faded Hollywood legend. But, as she proved in her final film, it’s never too late to reinvent yourself.