Michelle Yeoh just scored her first-ever Oscar nomination this morning for her role in the A24 film Everything Everywhere All At Once. The nomination has been a long-time coming for the actress, whose long-running career has included some of the most groundbreaking films of the 21st century.
Yeoh's nomination is just one of the eleven total nominations racked up by Everything Everywhere All At Once. The film was also nominated for best costume, original score, original screenplay, best original song, film editing, and directing for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Yeoh's costars Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephanie Hsu, and Ke Huy Quan were also nominated for their supporting roles.
Originally released in March 2022, Everything Everywhere All At Once has a long and unexpected journey to being an awards season darling. The film is an absurdist science fiction comedy-drama that tells the story of Evelyn, a laundromat owner who is going through a tax audit. While navigating this tax trouble, Evelyn is also confronted by her husband's impending divorce request, and her often tense relationship with her daughter. And when Evelyn is plunged into a multiverse of her unrealized alternate life paths, she will have to come to terms with the life she is already leading. Filled with visual gags, absurd humor, and heartwarming/heartbreaking moments, the film was one of the most talked about releases of 2022.
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This is Yeoh's first Oscar nomination, and is groundbreaking in that she is only the Asian best actress nominee in the award show's history, a fact that both speaks to Yeoh's talents and the Academy's own blind spots, historically speaking. The first nominee, Merle Oberon, was nominated in 1935, though hid her ancestry from the public at the time.
Yeoh is joined in the Best Actress category by Ana de Armas for her role in the film Blonde, which was also nominated for several Razzies yesterday, Michelle Williams for her work on The Fabelmans, Cate Blanchett for her role as the troubled composer Lydia Tár in the film Tár, and Andrea Riseborough, who is nominated for her work on the film To Leslie.
The 2023 Oscars will air on Sunday, March 12, 2023. The awards ceremony will air on ABC starting at 8:00 PM ET and 5:00 PM PT. You can check out some of Yeoh's Oscar-nominated work below.