LOS ANGELES: Tan Sri Michelle Yeoh has made Malaysia proud again as she won the Oscar as the best actress in a leading role in the comedy-drama film Everything Everywhere All at Once, which also won the best picture award at the 95th Academy Awards.

The Ipoh-born Yeoh, who received the Oscar at the award event held at the Dolby Theater at Ovation Hollywood in Los Angeles on Sunday, is also the first actress of Southeast Asian descent to win the prestigious award.

The Oscar adds to Yeoh’s recent winning streak for the same film including the Golden Globe Awards in early January as the Best Actress in A Musical of Comedy Motion Picture, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards in early February for the best performance by a female actor in a leading role and the most recent the Spirit Awards for her best lead performance. 

Yeoh, who played the role of the laundromat owner Evelyn, outshined the other three contenders in the best actress category — Cate Blanchet (Tár),  Ana de Armas (Blonde), Andrea Riseborough (To Leslie), and Michelle William (The Fabelmans).

Apart from Yeoh’s Oscar, Everything Everywhere All at Once which received 11 nominations also swept another six awards — Best Picture, Directing (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), Best Actor in a Supporting role (Key Huy Quan), Best Actress in a Supporting role (Jamie Lee Curtis), Original Screen Play, Editing (Paul Rogers).

Oscar for the best actor went to Brendan Fraser for the movie The Whale.

In her brief speech on the stage after receiving the award, the elated Yeoh said, “For all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight, this is proof dreams do come true. And ladies. don’t let anybody tell you you are ever past your prime.”

The movie termed as “absurdist sci-fi comedy” sees Yeoh playing the role of the matriarch of a Chinese-American family that owned a laundromat and had to face a universe-hopping supervillain while undergoing a tax audit.

Since starting off in a series of Hong Kong films in the 1990s, the former beauty queen has come a long way in achieving international stardom. She has acted in various films and in various roles, and has been nominated for numerous awards and had won many.

Her early role in English films including the Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) that won her international acclaim and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) that brought her a British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) nomination. Yeo also played a notable supporting role in the acclaimed romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians. The list goes on.

The win at the Oscars on Sunday is historic as Yeoh emerged the first Asian woman to win the Best Actress Oscar, and the second woman of color to win the award after Halle Berry in 2003.

It is another feather in the cap for Yeoh who is now viewed as an accomplished actress in the international stage.