If Everything Everywhere All at Once‘s Michelle Yeoh wins the best actress Oscar on March 12, she will become the first Asian to do so. But she’s not the first to be nominated: Merle Oberon preceded Yeoh 87 years ago — though no one knew it at the time.
The star of 1935’s The Dark Angel, for which she was nominated, kept her Indian heritage hidden her entire life. Born in Bombay to a Sri Lankan-Maori mother and white father, Oberon grew up in poverty in Calcutta. When she was 17, she moved to England to pursue acting; fearing backlash from a racist entertainment industry, she claimed she was born in Tasmania and that her birth certificate was lost in a fire.
She broke out playing Anne Boleyn in director Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII in 1933, which led to her being cast in Sidney Franklin’s World War I drama The Dark Angel,...
The star of 1935’s The Dark Angel, for which she was nominated, kept her Indian heritage hidden her entire life. Born in Bombay to a Sri Lankan-Maori mother and white father, Oberon grew up in poverty in Calcutta. When she was 17, she moved to England to pursue acting; fearing backlash from a racist entertainment industry, she claimed she was born in Tasmania and that her birth certificate was lost in a fire.
She broke out playing Anne Boleyn in director Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII in 1933, which led to her being cast in Sidney Franklin’s World War I drama The Dark Angel,...
- 3/12/2023
- by Hilton Dresden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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