Michelle Yeoh ‘felt a failure’ for not having children

Actress Michelle Yeoh has said she felt “like such a failure” for being unable to have a baby.

The Oscar winner said she always wanted to have a family, and her first marriage – to businessman Sir Dickson Poon – was partly “about having children, a next generation and all that”.

She had fertility treatment but that was unsuccessful, she told BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.

“And I think the worst moment to go through is every month you feel like such a failure,” she said.

“And then you go, why? And I think at some point you stop blaming yourself. I go, there are certain things in your body that doesn’t function in a certain way. That’s how it is.

“You just have to let go and move on. And I think you come to a point where you have to stop blaming you.”

Yeoh, 62, won an Oscar last year for Everything Everywhere All at Once, and is also known for films like Tomorrow Never Dies, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Crazy Rich Asians.

She is about to be seen as Madame Morrible in the new film version of Wicked.

Yeoh and Poon were married from 1988 to 1992.

She said not having children was “honestly not for the lack of trying because I have always and still do love babies”.

Asked by Woman’s Hour presenter Nuala McGovern how long it took her to reconcile with the fact she would not be able to do so, she replied: “Sometimes, honestly, I still think about it.

“I’m 62. Of course, I’m not going to have a baby right now, but the thing is we just had a grandchild.

“Then you feel you’re still very, very blessed because you do have a baby in your life.”

She remarried last year, and her stepson and his wife had a baby in January.

Yeoh added that she felt blessed to also have a number of godchildren, nieces and nephews.

However, it “took a long time” to come to terms with not having children of her own “because that also maybe would be the main factor that broke up my first marriage”, Yeoh said.

“But you also have to understand, these are conversations that you really have to have with yourself and be able to look ahead and think, yes, we love each other very much now, but in 10 years or 20 years, I still can’t give him the family that he craves for. And you have to be fair.

“That’s why this dialogue between a couple is so important. Like, if one wants [a baby] and the other doesn’t, this is something you have to face right at the beginning, because along the way, there will be a lot of hurt and difficult times.

“And so I think it was very brave on our path to admit, to say, ‘OK, let’s not drag this out, because that’s what we are doing. Because, we tried.'”

Yeoh got engaged to French motor racing executive Jean Todt in 2004, and they got married in 2023.