Yeoh has been equally beloved by audiences and critics throughout her career.

She was speaking at the Ritz-Carlton Bacara in front of an audience that included some members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, among them Academy president Janet Yang.

It generated a record amount of donations, including generous $10,000 contribution from Yeoh herself, announced during her speech to appreciative applause.

It was also the first since the death of its namesake on February 5, 2020, and it took place on what would have been the star’s 106th birthday.

SBIFF director Roger Durling, who worked closely with Douglas to create the award — past recipients have included both Douglas and his son Michael Douglas, John Travolta, Ed Harris, Quentin Tarantino, Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro, Forest Whitaker, Jessica Lange, Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, Judi Dench, Hugh Jackman and Martin Scorsese — said the actor, who was fearless on screen and off, would have been overjoyed to see it recognize Yeoh, who shares those same attributes.

He added, “Like Kirk, she’s truly an international superstar and icon.”

In between edited montages of Yeoh’s work that frequently had the audience cheering, several of Yeoh’s Everything Everywhere collaborators paid tribute to her.

Producer Jonathan Wang heralded her “strength, grace and power.” Co-writer/co-director Daniel Kwan opined, “This is Michelle’s night, but honestly, to us, this feels like Michelle’s year.” And co-writer/co-director Daniel Scheinert marveled at her work ethic, noting, “She’s literally in every single scene of the movie. I think she got half a day off over an eight-week shoot.”

She highlighted one of her favorite quotes of Kirk’s, “You must be brave enough to fail,” noting that it had also applied to her own career performing daring stunts in Hong Kong action films and the 1997 James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies: “You’ve got to be brave enough to fail, and you can’t let fear stop you.”

Yeoh, who turned 60 this year, then shared: “If one thing is certain about life, it is that nothing is certain.” The state of the film industry in which she works in today would have been unimaginable when she started out decades ago, she explained, remarking, “We may finally be turning the corner on the glass ceiling of age. I’m blessed and fortunate to still be an actor at a time when women’s voices and women’s talents are louder and more visible than ever. And I am so grateful and lucky that today the importance of representation is also finally being embraced. How essential and enlightened and just right it is to finally see different cultures and different places and different backgrounds and abilities portrayed on the screen. I am incredibly proud that maybe, just maybe, I played some tiny part in all of that.”