Long before Michelle Yeoh was jumping motorcycles onto moving trains, fighting beside James Bond or holding an Academy Award, she arrived in Hong Kong with almost no idea that she was about to become an action star.

One of the first people waiting on the other side of that transformation was Jackie Chan.

Yeoh has recalled that Chan was the first person she worked with after arriving in Hong Kong, when the future international star appeared with him in a television commercial in 1984. At the time, Chan was already an established action performer. Yeoh was a former ballet student and newly crowned Miss Malaysia whose movie career had barely begun.

Eight years later, the two would meet again under dramatically different circumstances.

By then, Yeoh had become an action star, walked away from acting altogether, and reached a point where her movie career could easily have remained in the past.

Instead, she returned opposite Chan in Police Story 3: Supercop.

And rather than quietly easing herself back onto the screen, she performed some of the most dangerous and memorable stunts of her career.

Their First Meeting Wasn’t on a Movie Set

Yeoh’s path into Hong Kong cinema was almost accidental.

Born in Ipoh, Malaysia, she had trained in ballet and studied at London’s Royal Academy of Dance before an injury disrupted her hopes of pursuing dance professionally. She later won Miss Malaysia in 1983.

Not long afterward, a friend contacted her about an opportunity in Hong Kong. Businessman and film producer Dickson Poon was searching for women to appear in television advertising with famous male stars.

Yeoh flew to Hong Kong, met Poon and was soon placed in front of a camera with Jackie Chan.

Looking back decades later, she described Chan as “the first person I worked with in Hong Kong.”

The 1984 Guy Laroche watch commercial may have seemed like a small assignment, but it helped open the door to D&B Films and the Hong Kong movie industry.

Yeoh’s background was unusual for an aspiring action performer. She was not a formally trained martial artist. What she did understand was movement.

Her years of dance training had taught her timing, balance, flexibility and choreography. When she watched stunt performers working, she began to recognize similarities between their movements and dance.

She wanted in.

She Had to Prove a Beauty Queen Could Fight

Yeoh moved quickly from small screen roles into action.

Her breakthrough came with Yes, Madam! in 1985, in which she played a police inspector alongside martial artist Cynthia Rothrock. The movie helped establish Yeoh as a physical performer capable of doing demanding fight choreography and many of her own stunts.

But entering Hong Kong’s action industry as a former beauty queen meant she had something to prove.

Yeoh later described arriving at gyms where male stunt performers would watch skeptically as she attempted to follow their routines. She trained relentlessly, translating skills developed through dance and athletics into screen combat.

More action films followed, including Royal Warriors and Magnificent Warriors.

Then, just as Yeoh had established herself as one of Hong Kong cinema’s most unusual new action stars, she stopped.

At the Height of Her Rise, She Walked Away

Yeoh married Dickson Poon in 1988 and stepped away from acting.

Years later, she explained that she had viewed marriage as something that deserved her full commitment. Traveling constantly and performing dangerous stunts did not seem compatible with the life she was trying to build.

For roughly four years, audiences did not see Michelle Yeoh starring in new action movies.

In an industry capable of moving extremely quickly from one star to another, four years was a significant absence.

Yeoh and Poon divorced in 1992.

That same year, she made her return.

And the man standing beside her was Jackie Chan.