It’s been a week of deeply personal revelations about fertility in Hollywood. Florence Pugh opened up about the double diagnosis that led to her decision to freeze her eggs, while Michelle Yeoh candidly reflected on her own experience with infertility, sharing the emotional challenges of that chapter in her life.
“I always wanted to have children,” the Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All at Once actress said on the Woman’s Hour podcast on Tuesday, November 19. “I went and did fertility [treatments] to aid in the process. I think that’s the worst moment to go through is every month. You feel like such a failure.”
Yeoh also revealed that her fertility struggles ultimately contributed to the end of her marriage to her first husband, Sir Dickson Poon. “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,’” she said. “And you have to be fair.”
Though the experience was incredibly difficult, Yeoh eventually found peace—and even joy—as her family grew in other ways. “I’m 62. Of course, I’m not going to have a baby right now, but the thing is we just had a grandchild,” Yeoh said. “Then you feel you’re still very, very blessed because you do have a baby in your life.”
“At some point, you stop blaming yourself,” she continued. “There are certain things in your body that don’t function in a certain way. That’s how it is. You just have to let go and move on. I think you come to a point where you have to stop blaming you.”
