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MICHELLE YEOH

She's smashed her way into movie lore with drop-kicks and head butts. Ang Lee.

When she materializes before you Michelle Yeoh positively radiates lithesome good health and bonhomie. The silky black hair swings of its own volition, the smilie is wide and winning while she coils and uncoils with a sinewy feline grace.

The fact that Yeoh, 38, could chop you into submission at 40 paces or render you unconscious with a swift blow to a vulnerable pressure point before you even reach for the on-switch of your tape recorder adds a whole fresh frisson to the encounter.

She demonstrates her prowess to eye-catching effect in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, an action-packed spectacular by Ang Lee whose reputation rests on more intimate family dramas such as The Wedding Banquet, The Ice Storm, Eat Drink Man Woman and Sense and Sensibility. Lee has described it as "Jane Austen with martial arts" because of the way the story examines the intertwined fates of two contrasting pairs of lovers.

Yeoh (pronounced Yooh), born in Malaysia to English-speaking ethnic Chinese parents, spent more than a decade as a Hong Kong action star, doing all her own stunts. She scored on the international arena opposite Jackie Chan in Supercop. The star had spotted her in a beauty queen contest in 1983 and then asked her to appear with him in a television commercial. By the time she appeared three years ago with [Pierce Brosnan] in the top grossing Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies as a Chinese spy who shoots, kicks and swims past all the bad guys, Yeoh had arrived.

On that occasion director Roger Spottiswoode opined that Yeoh had helped to modernise the Bond world. "It was time to have a different kind of woman, someone beyond stereotype. Michelle is completely on Bond's level, even in real life. She has enormous strength, yet she's very feminine. Michelle doesn't spend her time seducing anyone."

Yeoh today readily concurs with Spottiswoode's appraisal. "I could never relate to Bond bimbos, yelling 'Save me, James, save me!' I always thought of myself as James Bond," she purrs.

Despite having trained since the age of four with ballet lessons and later at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London Yeoh has been known to come a cropper. She has dislocated her shoulder, cracked assorted ribs, twisted her vertebrae, ruptured arteries in her leg and is the proud owner of a screw in her knee cap. "Sometimes I look at myself," she suggests, "and it seems like I've been thrown down five flights of steps."

The description bears no relation to the figure reclining before you who looks immaculately preserved and presented. On Crouching Tiger she sprained a ligament which suspended filming while she returned to the States for an operation. She recuperated at home in Baltimore with her fiance, a cardiologist, (previously she was married to a Hong Kong boutique tycoon Dickson Poon) - and fretted about whether Lee would wait.

"I had only completed ten or 15 days of filming, most of it in the Gobi Desert, before the accident. It was very frustrating and I kept thinking that the studio would turn round to Ang and say they could not afford to wait for me. But Ang never waivered, and kept assuring me everything was fine and just to get well. Now at screenings we are assured of such a rousing response to those action scenes that it was almost worth all the pain and suffering. The really appealing aspect of this film was that Ang wanted to concentrate equally on the emotions," she says.

She plays martial artist Yu Shu-lien who is given a jade sword, Green Destiny by her lover, the legendary warrior Li Mu-bai (Chow Yun-Fat). It is stolen and suspicion falls on the scheming Jade Fox (Cheng Peipei) and her charge May Wong (Zhang Ziyi), a curious beauty about to be given away in a loveless marriage. The scale of the narrative is almost Shakespearean in its complexity and in the components of perfidy, banditry and fighting.

"It was damn hard work. This is not just about martial arts. It's definitely an Ang Lee film which deals with legends and myths, and all those stories we grew up with about the swordsmen and women being able to fly. Trying to remember all those movements and also to play the drama, with your face expressing the emotions meant that your brain was literally split in two," she says. The action is an extension of the drama and of the various character traits. Yeoh explains: "Why is it that some people can fly, while others are always grounded and will never reach that level. Chow's character is the one who flies the easiest and the fastest because he has freed himself from all worldly ties. On the other hand my character has to bounce off the walls and the rooftops because she is more burdened by responsibilities. She is the more grounded person."

Yeoh has now been in the business for more than a decade during which time, she asserts, "it's changed enormously. It used to be a very male dominated set-up with the Jackie Chans, the Schwarzeneggers and the Stallones. Yet women love to see another female kick some guy's ass. We work in a way that is visually and aesthetically different from the guys - it is almost acrobatic and balletic and doesn't revolve around grunts and groans. The characters I play, and choose to play, retain that feminine side. Your feminine side is your natural gift so why throw it away. I was lucky in a sense that when I came along the Hong Kong industry was a on a roll and they could afford to take risks."

On another occasion when she was hospitalized after dislocating her neck after jumping off an 18 ft. wall, she was visited on her sick bed in Hong Kong by closet fan Quentin Tarantino who sat at her feet, propped on a pillow, and spent hours dissecting her films frame by frame. Another devotee is Oliver Stone who once confessed that he had always had a crush on her. "I've seen all her movies," he said. "I decided to go and meet her. It was in a very remote location, hours outside Beijing. I drove out to find her with a cab driver who didn't speak English. I was smitten, because she's sophisticated, cool and beautiful, and nobody moves as smoothly as she does."

Yeoh finds such attentions flattering if a tad embarrassing. She says modestly that "action is just choreography" and her thin and delicate frame makes up in a agility what she may lack in physical stature - she's 5ft 4in - and strength.

She's part of the growing Hong Kong invasion of Hollywood. Such directors as John Woo and Stanley Tong have carved considerable reputations while Yeoh's Crouching Dragon co-star Chow Yun Fat has become a hugely successful leading man on the strength of Jodie Foster's Anna and the King.

"I guess the Bond movie put me on the map internationally which helped a lot. My face was projected all over the world right away. Even though she was a Bond girl, it was still a strong female role. Asians are part of American society, and there should be a lot more Asian faces up there on screen. I've been an actress for the best part of 15 years. Although I have no directorial ambitions, I have turned towards producing. I can recognise talent, and know good people who deserve the opportunity to work together. Having got so much out of the industry I want to put something back, and also give the next generation some opportunties." One of her projects The Touch will be made for Media Asia who have signed her to a three-picture deal. She's also slated for an Indiana Jones sequel and a John Woo-produced actioner Mint Condition at MGM.

Compared to her Hong Kong days she has become choosy and selective... and studio executives at last have stopped asking if she can speak English. "I have reached the stage in my career where it has to be something I really want to do, especially if I am going to devote six months or more of my life to it. Women have always had a strong presence in Asia and now Hollywood is catching up. There's only one thing I don't understand: Why do the men always earn more money?" Yeoh doesn't wait for answer. She ups and leaves for her next rendezvous with a meaningful toss of her locks and an obvious spring of determination in her stride. Watch out world.

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