WOULD you believe that Michelle Yeoh and Uma Thurman might have faced off in the iconic 2003 action-drama Kill Bill, if not for director Quentin Tarantino having other plans?
Tarantino himself has said that Yeoh’s performance in the 1992 Jackie Chan action comedy Police Story 3 was a big inspiration for Uma Thurman’s The Bride, and many have wondered why he never asked Yeoh to star in his own film.
“I asked Quentin the same question,” Yeoh said in her Town & Country cover interview. “He’s very smart. He said, ‘Who would believe that Uma Thurman could kick your ass?’”
As it turns out, Yeoh and Tarantino have a long history of friendship. In fact, it was the director who encouraged Yeoh to continue acting after she was injured on the set of The Stunt Woman in 1996.
“I thought I broke my back. I thought I was paralysed,” Yeoh said, revealing that Tarantino was in Hong Kong at the time screening Pulp Fiction and decided to visit her in the hospital.
“I must say, Quentin, he’s persistent,” Yeoh continued. “He is who he is today because he’s full of passion and love, so he wore me down. Suddenly we became animated. So then I thought, ‘Maybe I’m not ready to give up on this.’”
“I was just a huge, huge fan of hers,” Tarantino later told Town & Country. “There was always a twinkle in her eye.”
Tarantino still intends to retire from feature filmmaking after his tenth movie, which leaves him with only one project to complete. The hope is that Yeoh will appear in a Tarantino film before he calls it quits.
