Michelle Yeoh

Yeoh built her reputation in Hong Kong action cinema through the 1980s and 1990s, credited early as Michelle Khan, performing her own stunts in Yes, Madam!, Magnificent Warriors, Police Story 3: Super Cop, The Heroic Trio and Tai-Chi Master. That is the foundation for everything else: she acts through movement, and in her best films the fighting is characterisation rather than spectacle.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the clearest demonstration. As Yu Shu Lien she plays a woman who has chosen duty over what she actually wants, and the restraint in the swordplay is the same restraint she is exercising in every conversation. Tomorrow Never Dies had already done something rarer for a Bond film, handing 007 a partner with her own agenda instead of a prize.

The middle stretch was uneven and she was frequently the best thing in the picture: Memoirs of a Geisha, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Sunshine, Marco Polo, Star Trek: Discovery. Crazy Rich Asians is the exception, an entire performance constructed out of withheld approval, and it is the film that reminded the industry she could carry drama without a wire rig.

Everything Everywhere All at Once finally gave her a lead that used the whole range, comic, physical and grief-stricken inside a single scene, and brought the Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe after four decades of work. What has followed is franchise scale: Madame Morrible in Wicked, Star Trek: Section 31, A Haunting in Venice, and voice roles across Kung Fu Panda and Transformers.