Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Michelle Yeoh gives a powerful speech for her historic Best Actress win

We finally live in a universe where Michelle Yeoh is an Oscar-winning actor.

The star of Everything Everywhere All at Once triumphantly took the stage for her performance in the lead role of Evelyn Wang, claiming the third of the three major acting awards the film was nominated for.

“For all the little boys and girls who look like me watching tonight, this is a beacon of hope and possibilities,” Yeoh said in her acceptance speech. “This is proof that dreams come true. And ladies…never let anybody tell you that you are past your prime.”

Yeoh’s win makes Everything Everywhere All at Once only the third movie in Oscars history to win three out of the four major acting awards — the previous being Sidney Lumet’s Network and Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire. The win is even more historic for the Academy, as it is the first time an Asian actress won the award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

It was a long time coming. With a nearly 40-year career in film, Yeoh began as a Hong Kong action star in the ’90s working with Jackie Chan in international hits like Super Cop (A.K.A. Police Story 3) before leaping to Hollywood film as Chinese spy Wai Lin in the 1997 Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.

As a gifted performer that known for both her dramatic work as well as her stunt prowess in martial arts films, Yeoh would continue to star in films both from Hollywood and abroad, her profile slowly rising until the runaway success of 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians, where Yeoh played family matriarch and primary antagonist Eleanor Young.

Everything Everywhere All at Once was nominated for 11 Oscars tonight.