Oscar-winning Malaysian actor Michelle Yeoh said she had wanted to be an Olympian before becoming a movie star, after she was voted onto the International Olympic Committee (IOC) yesterday.
The first Asian woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress — when she scooped the award for Everything Everywhere All at Once earlier this year — Yeoh said that she hoped to use her new role to continue her work with refugees.
She was one of eight new members voted in on the final day of the 141st IOC session in Mumbai, India.
Photo: AFP
Before the vote, Britain’s Princess Anne, the chair of the IOC’s member election committee, introduced Yeoh as “a Malaysia junior squash champion.”
“Sadly, her other different skills took her away from her sporting life but a very fulfilled career and a lot of interest in sport throughout that,” Princess Anne said.
Speaking to reporters afterward, a smiling Yeoh said: “I remember when someone asked me how did you become an actress, and I always said: ‘I never dreamed of being an actress, but as a child I always dreamed of being an Olympian.”
“Sports was very much part of my life growing up, I was very much involved with squash, athletics, swimming and diving,” she said.
Yeoh said she hoped that she could combine her experience of being a successful actor with the knowledge she has gained from being a goodwill ambassador for the UN Development Programme.
“When I see Team Refugee [the Olympic team composed of refugee athletes] it moves me and I feel that could be a very, very good place to start, because I have already been working with that,” Yeoh said. “In the camps, it’s true, when you see the kids they don’t have anything and you have to give them hope. Somehow I feel sports do that.”
Following her election by 67 votes to nine, with one abstention, Yeoh said there were many similarities between acting and top-level sport.
Asked if squash was still her favorite sport, the 61-year-old replied: “It used to be, but then two knee surgeries, a bad back. Now I do a lot of free shadow boxing because I still do martial arts in my movies.”
“So I keep up with hiking and swimming, which is one of the more gentle sports to do,” she said.
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