Aung San Suu Kyi, Michelle Yeoh: Black-listed actress deported from Burma
A Hollywood actress playing the Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in an upcoming biopic about her life was reportedly refused entry into Burma earlier this month.
The Guardian reports that Michelle Yeoh, a Malaysian-born actress best known in the U.S. for her roles in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Jame Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, arrived at the Rangoon airport on June 22 but was detained by authorities and quickly put on a flight out of the country.
“She was deported on the same day because she is on a blacklist,” an immigration official told Reuters on Tuesday.
Though apparently blacklisted, the actress has previously traveled Burma. In December, shortly after Aung San Suu Kyi’s release, the actress visited the activist in her house in Yangon to discuss the film. That visit occured only weeks after Aung San Suu Kyi was released from a seven-year period of house arrest.