Michelle Yeoh opens up about infertility struggles: 'You just have to let go and move on'

The Academy Award winner speaks candidly about feeling like "a failure" for not being able to carry a baby.

Michelle Yeoh is speaking candidly about her infertility struggles, revealing that she felt like "such a failure" because she was unable to carry a child.

In conversation with BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, the Academy Award winner, 62, said she always wanted to have children, but fertility treatments during her first marriage, to the Hong Kong business magnate Dickson Poon, were unsuccessful.

"I think the worst moment to go through is every month you feel like such a failure," said Yeoh. "And then you go, 'Why?' And I think at some point you stop blaming yourself. There are certain things in your body that doesn't function in a certain way. That's how it is."

Related: Michelle Yeoh says taking her Wicked movie role was a 'risk'

"You just have to let go and move on," she added. "And I think you come to a point where you have to stop blaming you."

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It "took a long time" to come to terms with the infertility, added Yeoh, noting that it "also maybe would be the main factor that broke up my first marriage."

Yeoh was married to Poon between 1988 and 1992. The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon star recently wed her longtime partner Jean Todt in 2023, after a 19-year engagement. The actress has a number of grandchildren, godchildren, nieces, and nephews — and for that, she is grateful, she said.

"I'm 62. Of course, I'm not going to have a baby right now, but the thing is we just had a grandchild," said Yeoh. "Then you feel you're still very, very blessed because you do have a baby in your life."

Yeoh, who made history in 2023 as the first Asian woman to win a best actress Oscar for her role as Evelyn Wang in Everything Everywhere All At Once, is currently on the press circuit for the film adaptation of the musical Wicked, which reunites her with her Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu. She plays Madame Morrible, a headmistress at Shiz University, in the Wizard of Oz prequel led by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.

Related: Cynthia Erivo was glad Ariana Grande got Wicked role: 'It was not the two ladies that I was auditioning with'

At the film's Los Angeles premiere, Yeoh admitted that she was unfamiliar with the musical when Chu approached her for the gig. "I knew Wizard of Oz, who doesn’t, but not Wicked, because I hadn’t been going to the theaters and not doing what I love which is watching musicals, for quite a while I hate to say," Yeoh told The Hollywood Reporter, adding that she was "terrified" that she had to sing in the film.

"The process of exercising, learning to use the muscles in a different way, was actually very, very good for me because it helps with my voice as an actor," she added of working with a coach. "So I had fun.”

Wicked is in theaters Nov. 22.